Editor’s Note: With summer winding down and BreakPoint staff on vacation, we will be re-airing a few popular BreakPoints from John, Eric, and Chuck.

The first week of April saw a social-media-driven panic sweep across the campus of Indiana University. Starting around 9:15pm, students started tweeting about a sinister character prowling about campus seeking whom he might devour.

One student tweeted, “[IU] students be careful, there’s someone walking around in [KKK] gear with a whip.” Another complained about the school’s failure to “make students feel safe.”

A residence hall advisor then fired off an email saying, “There has been a person reported walking around campus in a KKK outfit holding a whip . . . I would recommend staying indoors if you’re alone.”

When an intrepid IU student confronted the threat at a local frozen yogurt shop—that’s your first clue—he did not find a Klansman, complete with hood and whip. Instead, he found a Dominican friar, Father Jude McPeak, whose “hood” turned out to be his habit and whose “whip” was his rosary.

And far from looking for someone to assault, Father McPeak was on his way back from a meeting with students. It wasn’t the only time he had been on campus: He often walks around IU praying for students.

For his part, Father McPeak chuckled and said it wasn’t the first time his appearance had ruffled some feathers. True, but it’s almost certainly the first time that people responded to his habit by asking him whether he hated black people.

Events in Bloomington reminded my colleague John Stonestreet of another example of ignorance about Christian faith and practice closer to his home. After the 2007 shootings at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, a reporter asked a member of the church who witnessed the shootings whether they took place during or after “Mass.”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Why the Media Doesn’t Get Religion–and How We Can Help →

Editor’s Note: With summer winding down and BreakPoint staff on vacation, we will be re-airing a few popular BreakPoints from John, Eric, and Chuck.

If your son or daughter is getting ready for college, you’re probably feeling the mixed emotions of pride and nervousness: pride in your child’s accomplishments and nervousness for . . . well, for a whole host of reasons.

If you’re a Christian parent, for instance, you may be concerned for your son or daughter’s faith. Maybe you know how many young adults with church backgrounds end up dropping out of church: 43 percent, according to David Kinnaman in his recent book “You Lost Me.” At least part of this trend stems from college lessons and experiences that can chip away at students’ faith, leaving them unsure what they really believe.

As a friend of mine says, sending your children to college is like sending them off for “four-year brain and heart surgery.” Now, there’s more to that analogy than meets the eye. Surgery can be a good thing, but one has to prepare for it properly. And part of that is asking the right questions. When you’re having surgery, you want to know things like, how experienced is this surgeon? What’s his or her track record? And most importantly, what exactly is going to happen to me?

But when it comes to choosing and preparing for college, too many students and parents focus on the wrong question. They want to know what the dorms are like or how good the football team is. Is there good food in the cafeteria? But what they really need to ask is, what’s exactly going to happen to my son or daughter? How will this college affect their faith and worldview? Do students here get educated or indoctrinated?

For students and parents who want to know the right questions, and how to prepare for college, I’m pleased to recommend the book “Welcome to College: A Christian’s Guide for the Journey,” written by my friend Jonathan Morrow. As the title makes clear, Morrow has written this book specifically for young students about to embark on the college experience. The tone is friendly and accessible, and the book deals with the breadth of college life, from picking roommates and classes to making sure not to park in the wrong spot!

But most importantly, “Welcome to College” lays out the basics of the Christian worldview, as well as the challenges that are likely to come to that worldview, in a way that students can understand and learn to apply — in their college years and beyond.

Continue reading BreakPoint – Welcome to College: Why It’s Important to Ask the Right Questions →

We’ve all heard the story of Eric Liddell, who turned down an opportunity for Olympic gold at the Paris Games in 1924 in order to honor His Savior. It was Liddell who famously said, “God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

Well, this summer in Rio de Janeiro, there’s been a whole lot of running, jumping, swimming, and competing by athletes seeking to honor Jesus Christ. Not that you’ve heard much about it from the “mainstream” media. I spoke about this media blackout with my friend Terry Mattingly, who’s one of today’s foremost religion journalists. Terry told me, “If these athletes make faith a part of their story, how do you leave out faith when telling their story?” Come to BreakPoint.org for a link to the podcast.

Now, I’ve already told you the story of super-swimmer Michael Phelps, who reached the pinnacle of sports and found it hollow—and then contemplated suicide. But Phelps found a reason to live when Ray Lewis gave him a copy of “The Purpose-Driven Life,” by Rick Warren. Michael’s story reminds us of the role that God’s people have as bringers of hope and agents of restoration.

There have been many such reminders in Rio. Fiji dominated Great Britain, 43-7 in rugby, earning the island country’s first-ever gold medal. Then the winning players huddled and sang, both in English and Fijian: “We have overcome / We have overcome / By the blood of the Lamb / And the Word of the Lord / We have overcome.” Then they received their medals humbly—on their knees!

In the women’s 10,000 meters race, Almaz Ayana, from Ethiopia, obliterated the previous world record by 14 seconds. Responding to unfounded rumors about cheating, Almaz retorted, “My doping is my training and my doping is Jesus. Nothing otherwise —I am crystal clear.”

American swimmer Simone Manuel set an Olympic record in the 100-meter freestyle, becoming the first African-American woman to win gold as a swimmer, the first African-American woman to win a medal in an individual swimming event, and the first American to win the 100-meter since 1984. After the race she said, with tears rolling down her cheeks, “All I can say is all glory to God.”

Continue reading BreakPoint – Faith at the Olympics: Rio’s Best Kept Secret →

We’ve talked before on BreakPoint about the fertility crisis facing China, Japan, and much of Europe—all of which face what has been called a “demographic winter.”

Until recently, the United States has been an exception to this distressing trend, but this seems no longer the case.

To understand why, here’s a primer. Demographers use two numbers to measure fertility rates: the average number of children a woman gives birth to during her lifetime—that’s called the “total fertility rate”—and the number of births per 1,000 women, often referred to as the “birth rate.”

If the “total fertility rate” drops below 2.1 children per woman, a country’s population will shrink unless there are compensating levels of immigration.

And that’s what’s been happening in the U.S. since at least 2008. Our total fertility rate has dropped below replacement levels, but has been masked by high levels of immigration in two distinct, but related, ways.

First, immigrants replaced children that native-born Americans weren’t having. Second, immigrant women had higher than replacement-level fertility rates, which, as Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard pointed out in his book, “What to Expect When No One is Expecting,” made our total fertility rate significantly higher than it would have otherwise been.

The boost from immigration, however, appears to have ended. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, our total fertility rate mirrors Sweden’s, Norway’s, and the United Kingdom’s, and is even lower than France’s.

And a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control suggests it may drop more. According to the report, the U.S. birth rate has dropped to an all-time low of 59.6 births per 1,000 women.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Dropping Fertility Rates: Is America in Trouble? →

Charles W. “Chuck” Colson was packing his bags to go home, having served his time for a Watergate-related offense. A new Christian when he entered prison, his faith had been tested behind bars. But he was sustained by the unwavering support of his wife, Patty, and that of his Christian friends on the outside. Also, he’d focused his energy while in prison ministering to fellow inmates.

As Chuck was saying his goodbyes, a large prisoner named Archie confronted him. “Hey, Colson,” he snarled, “You’ll be out of here soon. What are you going to do for us?”

Chuck said, “I’ll help in some way. I’ll never forget you guys or this stinking place.”

“Bull!” Archie yelled back, “I’ve seen big shots like you come and go. They all say the same things while they’re inside. Then they get out and forget us fast. There ain’t nobody cares about us. Nobody!”

Those words were at least part of the reason that Chuck, in August of 1976, filed papers to incorporate a brand new non-profit ministry: Prison Fellowship.

Chuck not only kept his promise to remember those in prison, he mobilized thousands of Christian volunteers and churches to do the same. For forty years now, the most forgotten-members of our society have heard the Good News of Jesus Christ, through Bible studies, seminars, and mentoring.

But Chuck wanted to do more than help those within the walls. He wanted to break the cycle of crime and incarceration. And so, Prison Fellowship has also mobilized churches and volunteers to minister to the families of prisoners through Angel Tree, which delivers Christmas gifts to the children of prisoners in the name of their incarcerated parents.

Continue reading BreakPoint – Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship Celebrates 40 Years →

One hundred and twenty years ago, H.G. Wells wrote a novel, “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” about what happens when a scientist, in a mad pursuit for knowledge, creates human-animal hybrids. In a word—what happens is chaos. Wells called the book “an exercise in youthful blasphemy.” He may have said the same about the National Institutes of Health today.

The NIH, under the leadership of professing Christian Dr. Francis Collins, is proposing lifting a ban on taxpayer funding of experiments that splice human stem cells with animal embryos, creating human-animal chimeras.

Proponents, of course, downplay any ethical concerns related to creating new life forms using human genetic material—for either the humans or the animals involved. They’re committed to the practical benefits of this kind of research, hoping to create animal models of human diseases in order to prevent and treat illnesses. A more ambitious goal is the production of sheep, pigs, and cows with human hearts, kidneys, livers, and pancreases to use in transplants. Proponents assure us that additional restrictions and ethics panels will prevent hybrid horrors, or chimeras, with too-human brains or with the capacity to breed.

“It’s very, very welcome news that NIH will consider funding this type of research,” says Pablo Ross of the University of California, Davis. “We need funding to be able to answer some very important questions.”

However, if you think such research crosses a moral Rubicon, you wouldn’t be alone. Rod Dreher summarized what is happening in an article with the somewhat hyperbolic title, “Christian-Run Agency Embraces Pig-Man.” “It’s pretty clear,” Dreher wrote, “that this is just a prelude to something that’s a fait accompli. Besides, who is going to stand in the way of Science™ over a trivial matter like basic human dignity?”

Continue reading BreakPoint – Should Christians Support Using Animal and Human Cells Together to Advance Science? →

It can seem to us that each day brings news of yet another setback or some new ominous cultural development that’s concerning to Christians, each one another straw on the back of an already overloaded camel.

But as recent events in California demonstrate, these trends can be resisted and, if not reversed, at least held at bay.

In late June, Eric Metaxas told us about California’s Senate Bill 1146. The bill, as its author, Senator Ricardo Lara, admitted, targeted Christian colleges and universities that adhered to traditional Christian teaching on human sexuality, including same-sex erotic relationships.

The bill would have required schools receiving religious exemptions from state or federal anti-discrimination laws to disclose this fact publicly. This alone would have created a state-mandated “hit list” that would have facilitated harassment and worse from LGBT activists.

But S.B. 1146 didn’t stop there. It would have limited the above-mentioned exemptions to seminaries and “religious vocational training schools.” Thus, Christian colleges and universities—schools such as Biola and Azusa Pacific—who offer programs in say business or education or the sciences, would have had to choose between eligibility for state grants-in-aid and fidelity to Christian morality. As the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities pointed out, this would have a potentially devastating effect on low-income students who depend on Cal Grants—75 percent of whom are ethnic minorities.

But wait: there was more. The bill also would have created a private right for LGBT people to sue if they felt discriminated against. Even if the person didn’t prevail in court, the potential for damage awards and the accompanying legal fees and bad publicity would have created a significant burden on schools that often struggle to keep the doors open in the first place.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  A Temporary Win for Religious Universities in California: Resistance is Not Futile →

You’ve probably heard a lot about China in the news lately: How it’s threatening peace in the Pacific by building military bases on artificial islands. You’ve heard presidential candidates warn that China may soon overtake the U. S. as the leading global economic power. But what you probably didn’t realize is that China is ready to overtake the U. S. in another area: the size of its Christian population.

You see, despite years of often savage oppression, the church in China is growing by leaps and bounds.

Yu Jie, a writer and dissident from China, tells the story powerfully in the August issue of First Things magazine. Yu reports that since 1949, when the communists took over and Christian missionaries were expelled, the number of Christians in China has multiplied from half a million to more than 60 million today. If current growth rates continue, “by 2030, Christians in China will exceed 200 million . . . making China the country with the largest Christian population in the world.”

And Yu, who became disillusioned with communism after the Tiananmen Square massacre, might very well be a little bit cautious in his estimates. The respected Operation World prayer guide counts not 60 million but 105 million Christians of all kinds in the country, far outstripping the 70 million or so members of the Communist Party!

Either way, it’s easy to see that the Chinese Church has been unbroken by decades of communist opposition. These days few Chinese outside the Party believe in communism, and the Church has begun to fill the resulting spiritual and worldview vacuums.

“Groups of young, well-educated, active professionals have gathered in urban churches,” Yu says, “smashing the stereotype in many Chinese people’s minds of Christians as elderly, infirm, sick, or disabled. These churches … are a first step toward Christians assuming leadership in the development of a Chinese civil society independent of government control.”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Unbroken in China: The Growing Chinese Church →

In his conversion story, “Surprised by Joy,” C. S. Lewis explains how his close friend, Owen Barfield, demolished his “chronological snobbery.” Lewis defined chronological snobbery as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.”

In Lewis’s time, much of academia was already convinced that every past generation formed a staircase of progress, leading (of course) to enlightened modernity. And since Lewis’s death, many intellectuals have only become more convinced of their own perch at the pinnacle of history. These days, we barely even notice the snobbery.

But it’s time to notice, especially in archaeology. An article last week in The New York Times describes new evidence for the Chinese great flood, an event which ancient records say coincided with the rise of China’s first imperial dynasty. For many years, Western academics have considered this flood a myth—on par with Noah’s Flood in Genesis which, unsurprisingly, they also dismiss as fiction.

But several new dig sites have unearthed inscriptions that refer to just such a flood along the Yellow River, almost 4,000 years ago. And a team of geologists led by Qinglog Wu of Peking University in Beijing says they’ve found evidence in the rocks of a natural dam that trapped several cubic miles of water. When the dam collapsed, it sent a deluge downriver large enough to wipe out a civilization—just as the Chinese legends suggest.

Western experts were less than enthused at the news. The Times quotes several prominent archaeologists who scoff at the discoveries as attempts to read too much into Chinese myths. Dr. Paul Goldin of the University of Pennsylvania derides what he sees as a “fixation” among Chinese archaeologists with “[proving] that all the ancient texts and legends have some fundamental truth…It shouldn’t be every archaeologist’s first instinct,” he says, “to see if their findings are matched in the historical sources.”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  A Flood of Evidence: Chronological Snobbery and Archaeology →

In the months and even years leading up to this year’s Rio Olympics, much of the news about Michael Phelps, as of this recording the nineteen-time gold medal swimmer, was bad. In September of 2014, he was arrested for driving while under the influence in his hometown of Baltimore.

It seemed that Phelps’ best days, both in and out of the pool, were behind him.

But that’s not how it turned out, and I think you can guess why.

As you probably know, Phelps carried the American flag during the opening ceremonies on Friday August 5. Then, as of this recording, he’s added three more gold medals to his impressive lifetime total, now numbering 21.

To put it mildly, both of these were unlikely less than two years ago.

As Phelps told ESPN, following his announced retirement in 2012, he struggled to “figure out who he was outside the pool.” In his words, “I was a train wreck. I was like a time bomb, waiting to go off. I had no self-esteem, no self-worth. There were times where I didn’t want to be here. It was not good. I felt lost.”

Like a lot of people struggling with similar feelings, he self-medicated.

In the immediate aftermath of that DWI arrest, he cut himself off from family and other loved ones and “thought the world would just be better off without me . . . I figured that was the best thing to do — just end my life.”

That’s when a friend came to his rescue: former All Pro linebacker Ray Lewis, whom Phelps considers a kind of “older brother.” Seeing the hopelessness and despair in his young friend, Lewis, an outspoken Christian, told him, “This is when we fight . . . This is when real character shows up. Don’t shut down. If you shut down we all lose.”

Continue reading BreakPoint – Michael Phelps is Driven: An Olympian Finds His Purpose →

Christians are sometimes accused of being “in denial,” especially when it comes to matters of sex. But after reading about a recent AIDS conference, I have to ask: Who’s really living in fantasy land?

At the recent UN international AIDS conference in South Africa, the actress Charlize Theron announced that HIV “has no biological preference for black bodies, for women’s bodies, for gay bodies . . . HIV is not just transmitted by sex,” she explained. “It’s transmitted by sexism, racism, poverty, and homophobia.”

Matthew Hanley, a Senior Fellow with the National Catholic Bioethics Center, writes at Mercatornet that while it was Theron who made these nonsensical remarks, they could have been made by almost any professional at the conference. When Theron says AIDS is not spread just by sex, “she means to direct attention away from sex itself, to minimize its primary role, and to shift ultimate [blame] anywhere else.”

“Statements like these,” Hanley adds, “sound less like medicine than a strand of Marxism—cultural Marxism.”  Marxism has “morphed away from the sphere of economics and into the sexual revolution,” he explains. This means that “every form of sex has necessarily come to be regarded … as equal; therefore . . . Nothing must jeopardize the truly radical assertion that there are no differences in the arena of sexuality . . . Objective hazards must be repackaged to conform to the value assigned to sexual behavior—which is something we don’t do for other public health matters.”

For instance, nobody says smoking cigarettes or drinking huge amounts of sugary drinks is healthy and normal–or distributes pills in schools to offset the effects of tobacco and sugar. Instead, we urge young people to avoid cigarettes altogether, and cut down on the soft drinks.  But heaven forbid we tell them to avoid sex.

The United Nations isn’t the only place we’re witnessing an absolute refusal to acknowledge that all sex is not equal when it comes to public health. Dr. Paul Church, a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty, was fired from his position at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center last year for telling the truth about homosexual behavior: That, as Bryan Fischer writes at barbwire.com, it “leads to a higher incidence of HIV/AIDS, STDs, hepatitis, parasitic infection, anal cancers, and psychiatric disorders.”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  The Sexual Revolution and Cultural Marxism: Ideology over Public Health →

For nearly the last hundred years, Turkey, straddling Europe and Asia, has walked a precipitous path. Turning its back on the brutal Ottoman Empire of its past, the nation of 80 million people had attempted to combine its dominant Muslim culture with a more Western-oriented secularism—allowing a measure of political and religious freedom not common in most other Muslim-majority states.

Well, it seems as if Turkey is now on its way to falling into an intolerant form of Islam—if it hasn’t already. How do I know this? By listening to the country’s beleaguered Christian minority, which has dwindled from 22 percent of the population to a microscopic 0.2 percent just over the last century.

You probably know that Turkey, a key NATO ally that is 98 percent Muslim today, has deep Christian roots. The Book of Acts tells us that the followers of Jesus in Antioch, Antakya today, were the first to be called Christians. Revelation’s Seven Churches of Asia were in what is now Turkey. The first seven Ecumenical Councils in church history were held there. The magnificent Hagia Sophia in Constantinople—today, Istanbul—was one of the crown jewels of Christendom, until the city fell to the Ottomans in 1453. For the past 85 years, the Hagia Sophia, under secular rule, has been a museum, a cultural artifact of a proud Christian past. However, Muslim prayers are again being heard from within its walls.

There are other sounds in Turkey, too—the sounds of glass shattering, of fires burning, of shots fired, of people screaming. You likely heard of the failed coup by the military against the Islamist-leaning government of President Recep Erdogan. The government has rounded up or jailed more than 15,000 people suspected of participating in the coup. Scores are definitely being settled.

All of that is bad enough, but we are seeing something else in Turkey common in Muslim-dominant cultures when chaos breaks out: Christians become convenient targets. London’s Express newspaper reports that hardline Sunni Muslims, whipped into a frenzy by imams calling on them to take to the streets, targeted a small, Protestant church in a shopfront in Matalya. Shouting “Allahu Akbar,” the mob smashed the church’s windows, although no one was hurt.

“The attack on the church was light,” the pastor told the Express. “But it’s significant that it was the only shopfront attack in those three days. We were the only targets.” In one Black Sea city another group smashed the windows of the Santa Maria Church, breaking down its door with hammers. And the Turkish government has confiscated churches in the city of Diyarbakir.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Ominous Signs for Turkish Christians: Post-Coup Targets →

Back in 2001 on BreakPoint, Chuck Colson talked about a concept that would become a cornerstone of his Christian worldview teaching on government and politics. That concept was “the political illusion”: the idea that government can create the good society and solve all our problems.

In the midst of this extraordinary presidential race, we thought it was time to hear Chuck on this topic again. And be sure to tune in next week, as John Stonestreet will share with us his thoughts on the election. Now, let’s hear from Chuck:

Congress recently shot down a constitutional amendment that would have required the federal government to balance its budget. In essence Congress said, We can’t do it. We can’t do what it takes to balance the budget.

It was a major admission of defeat.

Politicians have been promising to fix the deficit for years. In 1976 both presidential candidates made promises to balance the books. But today the debt is bigger than ever, and growing.

And it’s finally beginning to dawn on people that government is not able to deliver on a lot of its promises.

For most of us, that’s a hard lesson to learn. We instinctively turn to government to solve our social problems. It’s a habit reinforced from the time we’re young.

Listen to these quotations from the Teachers’ Edition of a fifth-grade social studies textbook.

“Today, when people lose their jobs,” the textbook says, “they can get some money from the government.” A few pages later the book says, “Today, families who do not have enough money for food can get money from the government.” And a few pages later we read, “Today families who cannot afford to pay their rent can get help from the government.”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  The Political Illusion: Limits of Government →

Recently on CNN, my BreakPoint co-host Eric Metaxas demonstrated, live and in-person, how to talk with those with whom you clearly disagree. In a discussion with host Don Lemon about Hillary Clinton’s choice of Tim Kaine as running mate, Eric articulated that the Democratic platform had become synonymous with the most radical pro-abortion position possible.

Lemon replied, “Well, Planned Parenthood certainly has a very high opinion of Tim Kaine.”

To which Eric replied, “Right, now that he’s out of the womb.”

It was a classic Eric line, that delivered truth about abortion and Planned Parenthood rarely heard on a network like CNN. And I think it was a demonstration of what it means to be “always be ready, in season and out of season,” as the Scripture exhorts us.

Now look, Eric and I don’t agree on everything. For example, though you’ll never hear Eric or me endorse a political candidate or party here on BreakPoint, Eric has voiced political opinions that I don’t share on his radio show and other platforms. And he’s completely free to do that.

Still, Eric is an example of how to speak truth in a hostile public square—even when people don’t want to hear it. That’s what he showed on CNN the other night.

It’s tempting for you and me to think, “I’ve never been on TV. I don’t have opportunities like he has.” No! We have all kinds of opportunities—over the backyard fence as Chuck Colson liked to say, across the Thanksgiving table with relatives who disagree, and certainly on social media every single day. These opportunities matter.

Now if we’re honest, we often feel pressure in those settings to be silent. My friend Michael Miller calls this “cocktail party pressure.” You know, an awkward topic comes up, like abortion, evolution, same-sex “marriage,” and you worry that if you state your views, you’ll risk the proverbial “record scratch” moment in the conversation.

Eric and I were on stage behind Chuck Colson as he was giving his last public speech. The topic was “The Spiral of Silence,” a theory developed by a German sociologist, which explains how people fear social isolation to the point that they generally go along with what they think is the popular opinion—even if they object to that opinion themselves. Instead of speaking up, they remain silent. And their silence encourages others to remain silent.

Continue reading BreakPoint – Metaxas Speaks Out, So Can You: Be Prepared to Share →

We don’t usually wish people a “Happy Birthday!” on the air, but I’m going to make an exception in this case. On August 7, one of the most inspiring and just downright likable people in American sports turn 60, Ernie Johnson of TNT.

If you are unfamiliar with Johnson’s work and his story, let me fill you in.

Most people who have heard of Johnson know him through his work both as an announcer and as a studio host.

Between 1993 and 1996, Johnson, alongside his father, Ernie Johnson, Sr., was the TV announcer for the Atlanta Braves. In addition to his play-by-play work for the Braves, Johnson has also announced Major League playoff games, college and professional football, and PGA golf events, among many other things.

But he’s best known for his work in covering the NBA. He’s the host of TNT’s “Inside the NBA,” which has won nine Emmy awards. Johnson and the show’s regulars—Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley—trade good-natured insults and basketball insights.

But what makes the show really work is Johnson. His gentle management of hugely outsized personalities keeps the show from descending into chaos while keeping the fun quotient high. But it’s more than astute people skills that makes Johnson so special. As Charles Barkley said in a 2015 ESPN profile of Johnson, he has “uncommon courage and a pure heart.”

This is true of Johnson both at home and in the studio.

Johnson and his wife, Cheryl, have four adopted children: Michael, who was born in Romania; Carmen, who was born in Paraguay; and Ashley and Allison, whom they adopted out of foster care.

This commitment to adoption sets the Johnsons apart all by itself, but the story doesn’t end there. Michael, who is 25, was born with a “progressive form of muscular dystrophy” and has been dependent on a ventilator for the past five years.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  The Faith of TNT’s Ernie Johnson: In Good Times and Bad →

Recently on BreakPoint, John Stonestreet said, “you are your body.” Meaning that we Christians understand that the human person is an embodied being; our bodies aren’t prisons we escape at death. He was right, of course. I say this because I don’t want you to misunderstand what I’m about to say: You are NOT your brain.

Let me explain. Much of modern science uses sloppy language that seems to attribute personhood to the central nervous system, conflating matter with mind, electrical signals with thoughts, and tacitly denying free will and even consciousness. You hear it every time a speaker at a TED conference or a host on the Discovery Channel talks of our brains “wanting,” “thinking,” or “deciding” things.

As Michael Egnor writes at Evolution News and Views, this is a “mereological fallacy,” the error of ascribing to the parts what only the whole can do. For example, stomachs do not eat lunch. Neither do fingers perform sonatas. People do these things. “The brain is an organ,” writes Egnor. “[it] floats around in spinal fluid inside the skull.” It is not a person. And therefore, it is not you.

But try explaining that to the New York Times. Citing a talk by Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano, the Times takes up the tired refrain that consciousness is just an illusion produced by the brain, “a con game the brain plays with itself.”

Our very sense of self, the Times rhapsodizes, that “ghostly presence” inside our heads, is just so much “data processing.”

“The machine mistakenly thinks it has magic inside it,” Princeton’s Graziano is quoted as saying.

Continue reading BreakPoint – New Science Trends: Why Human Beings are More Than Our Brains →

For more than two decades now, one of the most important voices on the subject of Christians’ relationship to culture has been Andy Crouch. From his work editing re:generation quarterly to books like “Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling,” Crouch has helped countless evangelicals navigate the shoals where faith and culture meet without running aground.

And that’s why I’m a bit puzzled by what he recently wrote about the subject of culture over at Christianity Today.

The piece had the provocative headline, “Stop Engaging ‘The Culture’ Because it Doesn’t Exist.” Now, as any writer will tell you, they usually don’t come up with the headline, so they shouldn’t be evaluated on the basis of it.

But in this case, the headline did convey the gist of Crouch’s arguments. As he wrote, “A nation of 300 million people, especially one as gloriously diverse as the United States, does not have one monolithic ‘culture.’” While it does have a “national ethos,” that ethos “is constantly being contested, challenged, and reimagined by different groups within the nation, and ignored or actively resisted by others.”

Now, overall I agree with this analysis, with a few caveats I’ll get into in a moment. As recent events in Baton Rouge, Minnesota, and Dallas painfully remind us, there are very real differences in people’s experiences and perceptions of American life.

I even largely agree with Crouch when he says that the best use of our limited time and resources is to “love our neighbor,” by whom he means “real people in a real place” and “living faithfully within our particular cultures and trusting God to weave out of our faithfulness the cosmic redemption he has promised and accomplished through his Son.” Absolutely.

Where I take issue with him is that this isn’t an “either/or” proposition. We can both love our flesh and blood neighbor and actively, strategically, and systemically oppose what Crouch calls the “systems of ideology and influence that operate independent of God.”

I am not sure what else our choice is, in fact. Not only can we walk and chew gum at the same time, sometimes we must.  Crouch’s analysis understates the impact of culture. While it’s true that American culture isn’t monolithic—after all, what culture is?—some ideas, trends, artifacts, and practices rise above the various subgroups that exist in our society and become part of our collective lives together. Here’s an example in two-words: Pokemon Go.

Continue reading BreakPoint – Should Christians Engage the Culture? →

It seems Chicken Little may be on to something.

My friend Rod Dreher is as sane and stable as anyone I know, and he’s saying, in essence, that the sky is falling. I reference his new article in The American Conservative, called “The Coming Christian Collapse.”

He begins by saying that the two-thirds of millennials who were raised religiously unaffiliated still have no denominational identity today. Unlike previous generations, they’re not joining churches as they get older and raise kids.

Second, Rod says, “Millennials, even those who identify as Christians, are shockingly illiterate, both in terms of what the Bible says and more generally regarding what Christianity teaches.” This growing biblical illiteracy has led to a moral decline of our young people into consumerism, drug abuse, sexual liberation, and civic and political disengagement.

Third, Rod says that the working class has largely abandoned the church, and that if the middle class follows suit, as appears likely, the church will be in a world of hurt. He quotes the late Michael Spencer, who warned of a coming evangelical collapse: “We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught.”

These are chilling words. We talk a lot on BreakPoint about external threats to our souls, and rightly so. But as Abraham Lincoln once said in another context, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”

Yet I am hopeful, as every Christian must be. As my colleague John Stonestreet says so often, we are part of the grand story of the universe. And God is the author of that story. Yes, as Peter reminds us, we will have to suffer “various trials.” But why? “So that the authenticity of [our] faith . . . may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:6-7)”.

This is not new. Back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, German Christians had to take a clear stand or be absorbed or compromised by evil—and some, like Bonhoeffer, chose the cross. Look at our brothers and sisters in the Middle East. Now, I’m not ready to say we American Christians may soon have to apostasize or die, but I can’t help but think of the words of the late Cardinal George, who said he would die in his bed, his successor would die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.

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