Let me tell you a story that, tragically, has no happy ending. Vincent Minj, who is almost 80, was the oldest of six children growing up in rural India, and he remembers the day decades ago when his sister, Cecilia, fell into a well near their home and almost died.

Somehow however, Cecilia lived, and Vincent took her survival as a sign from God. He told The Indian Express newspaper, “I thought that if God had given her another life, it had to be used in His service . . . So I just took her along with me and got her admitted to the Missionaries of Charity.”

That order of nuns, of course, was founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta to care for the poorest of India’s poor who would otherwise die alone and unloved. Vincent, who was a preacher himself, told his father that Cecilia was going to get an education in the city of Ranchi. What she got instead was a lifetime of serving the poor in India, then the United States, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, and, finally, Yemen. She was proving the corollary of a famous observation by Mother Teresa: “A life not lived for others is not a life.”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  An Unholy War: Answering Jihad →

Astronomers have long searched the sky for evidence that we’re not alone. But new research is suggesting we may be one of a kind.

There’s an old joke about Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Watson.

“Let’s go camping,” Holmes says to Watson one day. “Jolly good!” replies Watson. So the two pack up their gear, head into the woods, set up their tent and by nightfall, are sound asleep. Hours later, Watson is awakened by a nudge from Holmes.

“Watson!” says the detective, “look up! What do you see?” “I see the sky, full of stars,” says Watson, a little annoyed. “And what do you deduce from that?” asks Holmes. Watson thinks for a moment, and replies, “Well, given the thousands of stars, it’s improbable that ours is the only planet capable of sustaining life. Therefore, other beings like ourselves are likely out there somewhere, looking back at us. Is that what it means?”

“No, you nincompoop,” replies Holmes. “It means someone has stolen our tent!”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Extraordinary Earth →

Suppose you were given the choice between using your God-given gifts in a way that would make you famous, or in a way that would guarantee a life lived in obscurity.

That’s the choice one Victorian-era artist had to make. And her decision is the focus of the wonderful new documentary called “Many Beautiful Things.”

Lilias Trotter had a gift for seeing beauty and for capturing it in exquisite watercolors. Trotter was mentored by the greatest art critic of the period, John Ruskin. He told her that if she would devote her life to her painting, she could become one of the best artists of her time.

Lilias Trotter was torn over this. As tempting as the prospect was, she had other gifts that she felt called by God to use. Her gift of sight involved more than just her art; as one of the experts in the film tells us, she had “a rare gift for seeing a need.” She spent much of her time helping prostitutes and other needy women—time that Ruskin thought should have been spent on her painting.

Continue reading BreakPoint – Many Beautiful Things: The Gift of Sight →

To Christians, and even to many non-Christians, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien represent something special—a Christian literary renaissance of the 20th century. These two friends published works of great power and endurance, saturated with a Christian worldview. But was it only faith and friendship that made their work unique and so great? What other factors might have played a role?

My good friend and King’s College history professor Joe Loconte identifies one such factor in his marvelous new book, “A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War.” As the title suggests, Loconte focuses on the life-altering role that Lewis’s and Tolkien’s service in World War I played in both men’s lives. In fact, we can’t fully understand these two writers without knowing something about how this cataclysmic event helped define them and their generation.

And Loconte gives us the background we need. Ironically, Joe says, it was the Myth of Progress—the widely held belief that “science . . . could perfect human nature and thus human societies”—that laid the ground for a war that reached an unprecedented level of destruction. Darwinism, eugenics, industrialism—all these gave rise to a firm belief in “the upward flight of humankind.” Even many Christians went along with this foolish utopianism; those who resisted found the “tide turning against them.”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War →

There are few movies as beloved as Gene Kelly’s classic musical, “Singing in the Rain.” It’s a story about Hollywood’s awkward transition from silent pictures to—as they called them in the 1920s—“Talkies.” During one scene in which the characters watch their first “talkie,” a mogul of the old-school silent film industry scoffs, “It’ll never catch on.”

Well, it’s clear that film as we know it has not only “caught on,” but as Sunday’s Academy Awards remind us, it’s become probably the most visible expression of culture. But the Oscars reveal another transition taking place in Hollywood.

At first glance, this year’s nominees look like very different movies. One takes place on Mars, another in the American wilderness, and another in a nightmarish, dystopian future. But on closer inspection, writer and producer Bryan Coley says the nominees all have one thing in common: They’re about survival.

Bryan, who’s the Founder and Chief Creative Director of “Art Within,” calls movies the “cultural texts” of our time. John Stonestreet spoke with him on our latest episode of “BreakPoint This Week,” and got his take on this year’s Oscar nominees.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Oscars 2016: What Do Movies Tell Us about Our Culture? →

More than fifty years ago, doctors in the U.S. and Western Europe prescribed the drug thalidomide to their female patients for, among other things, nausea and morning sickness in pregnant women.

The drug had tragic outcomes whose effects are still being felt today.

In the late 1950s, reports of abnormalities in children whose mothers had used the drug during pregnancy began to come in. The best-known and most heartbreaking of these abnormalities was missing limbs.

Not surprisingly, within a few years the drug was taken off the market, but the tragic story of thalidomide doesn’t end there. As historian Daniel K. Williams tells us in his new book, “Defenders of the Unborn,” the thalidomide tragedy opened the door to legalized abortion in the United States.

Continue reading BreakPoint – Zika and Abortion Part II: is History Repeating Itself? →

Are there ever times when deliberately taking an innocent human life is okay? What if our intentions are merciful? What if we’re trying to relieve the suffering of one we love?

My home state of Colorado is asking these questions right now. A bill before the legislature would make us the fifth state to legalize assisted suicide, following Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and California. Sponsors of the bill are proposing it under the commonly used name “Death with Dignity.”

That’s a euphemism for killing elderly and terminally-ill patients by giving them a cocktail of toxic drugs. And unlike abortion, which has become less and less justifiable with the availability of ultrasound and neonatal care, it’s easy to make physician-assisted suicide sound compassionate.

“I feel that it’s a basic human right to be in charge of your own destiny,” says assisted suicide proponent Lance Wright. “The situation now is that you and I are not in control of what happens at the end of our lives.”

Continue reading BreakPoint – Why Assisted Suicide is a Poison Pill: Pushing Back against the Culture of Death →

You’ve probably heard of Title IX, the federal law signed by President Nixon in 1972 “that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.” Title IX is probably best known for its effect on women’s athletics by mandating equitable treatment with men’s teams.

Of course, discrimination against women and girls on the basis of their sex is a bad thing, and so Title IX—though not a perfect piece of legislation—has done a lot of good. But the federal government has a habit of extending legislation beyond its intended reach, and that’s what is happening right now with Title IX.

The Department of Education, under pressure from LGBT groups such as the Human Rights Campaign and some legislators, has agreed to create a public, searchable database of Christian colleges and universities that obtained Title IX waivers based on claims of religious freedom.

These exemptions—which, for example, allow religious schools to provide male-only or female-only dorms—have been granted routinely since the law’s passage, but all that may be beginning to change. According to a report in WORLD magazine, the HRC has “accused Christian institutions of ‘hidden discrimination’ for obtaining Title IX waivers.”

Continue reading BreakPoint – Christian Colleges & Gender Identity: The Next Assault on Religious Freedom? →

On February 1, the World Health Organization declared a “global emergency” over the spread of the Zika virus.

The WHO estimates there could be as many as 4 million cases of Zika in the Americas over the next twelve months. The Centers for Disease Control, while saying that Zika is unlikely to cause a widespread problem here in the U.S., is cautioning pregnant women to postpone travel to areas affected by the virus.

While Zika is rarely, if ever, life-threatening, concern about the illness could prove fatal for one vulnerable population: the unborn.

The Zika virus is a member of the same family of viruses as the ones that cause dengue and yellow fevers. Unlike these cousins, however, Zika’s affects, with one notable exception, are usually mild: headaches, fever, joint pains, and some rashes. Most of these symptoms go away within a few days.

The exception, which was first identified in French Polynesia three years ago, is that pregnant women infected with the virus are at a much greater risk of giving birth to children with microcephaly, a “neurodevelopmental disorder” characterized by significantly smaller head size.

Continue reading BreakPoint – Zika and Abortion, a Tale of Two Viruses →

In many ways, today is one of the strangest days of the year. Everywhere—at work, the grocery store, shopping, exercising—we’ll see all kinds of people walking around with dark smudges on their foreheads.

Now whether or not their own church participates in this ritual, most Christians will know that the smudge is the sign of the cross, and that today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent.

To the unbelieving world, Ash Wednesday is at best quaint (it’s sort of cool to have traditions, you know). At worst, it’s somewhere between bizarre and even anti-social. After all, to a culture committed to the pursuit of self-fulfillment and feeling good about oneself, this whole fasting and self-sacrifice stuff is an existential smack in the face.

Think of how these words contrast with our contemporary illusions of autonomy and self-determination: I am not my own. And I will die one day. And so will you. As the minister tells us when he rubs the ashes on our foreheads, “remember thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.”

Continue reading BreakPoint – We are Not Our Own: The Counter-Cultural Season of Lent →

Nearly four years ago, Chuck Colson walked onto the stage at the Colson Center’s Wilberforce Weekend. Chuck didn’t seem quite himself, as he had been recovering from an illness.

But the address he gave was vintage Colson. Surveying the cultural and political landscape, Chuck told the crowd, “What we are seeing now is the full fruits of 30 years of relativism, the death of truth, in the academy in particular, and in public discourse, and the coarsening of public discourse, [the] coarsening of politics.”

And in words that ring so true today, Chuck said, “Everybody looks to the elections and thinks the elections will settle this problem or settle that problem. Elections are important. Whoever serves in office, it makes a difference what kind of person that is and what that person believes.

“But elections can’t solve the problem we’ve got. The real problem that we’ve got is that our culture has been decaying from the inside for 30 or 40 years. And politics is nothing but an expression of culture. So . . . how do you fix the culture?”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Colson’s Speech: A Final Address, A Plan for Renewal →

A recent headline in the Washington Post proclaimed “Scientists open the ‘black box’ of schizophrenia with dramatic genetic discovery.”

While the headline may be a little hyped, what actually happened has the potential to be, as the saying goes, a “game changer”—only not in the way the article would have us believe.

As the Post reports, “scientists have pinned down a molecular process in the brain that helps to trigger schizophrenia.” An article published in the prestigious journal Nature describes the discovery of a “genetic pathway [that] probably reveals what goes wrong neurologically in a young person diagnosed with the devastating disorder.”

Now, it’s important to be clear on what schizophrenia is, especially since we use “schizophrenic” to mean being of two minds on a subject. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH, “Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. People with schizophrenia may seem like they have lost touch with reality.”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Can New Advances in Medicine Help Schizophrenics? →

by Eric Metaxas (Editor’s Note: Today’s commentary first aired January 19, 2016).

Imagine having dozens of new friends come into your life this year—friends who are, like you, committed Christians. These friends have the capacity to change your life forever, and help you develop your own ministry, using your own vision and your own God-given gifts. Plus, they’re a lot of fun. Wouldn’t you gladly embrace new friends like these?

Well I think, folks, you’d be crazy not to. Because these new friends are the leaders and participants of the Colson Fellows Program, formerly known as the Centurions Program.

As a Colson Fellow in training, you’ll spend nine months reading the best books, participating in teleconferences with the best thinkers, and attending three residencies with the best teachers of Christian Worldview—people like Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family; Joni Eareckson Tada; Sean McDowell of Biola University, Nabeel Quereshi of the Ravi Zacharias Institute, and our own Colson Fellows National Director, Dr. Bill Brown, former president of Bryan College and Cedarville University. And yes, of course John Stonestreet and I will be speaking to you as well!

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Putting Your Christian Worldview to Work with the Colson Fellows Program →