After talking this week on BreakPoint about the awful doctor-assisted suicide bill in Colorado, we’d planned to cover the complete misrepresentation of Intervarsity by both Time magazine and progressive post-evangelicals. But that will have to wait.

The headlines were stolen this week by a video of terrible comments made by Donald Trump in 2005. It has further divided the American people, and it has further divided Christians. In just the last week I’ve been accused of being both pro-Trump and “a tool of the progressive agenda.” Even so, I’m going to wade into these contentious waters today.

It should go without saying that the media are not unbiased. They’ve been looking for a silver bullet to end Mr. Trump’s campaign, and they think they’ve found it. So they’ve swarmed. But that’s no excuse. Mr. Trump handed them the ammunition.

His comments from 2005 are indefensible and disgusting. That’s why it’s so disheartening to hear Christians, including some Christian leaders, dismiss them. “His words were from eleven years ago,” some say. That might have mattered if he were, at the time, a teenager addicted to today’s hip hop music. But he wasn’t. He was 60.

“Others have done worse,” others say. But that’s not a moral argument, and it doesn’t make Trump’s words any less repugnant.

Trump himself, after an initial apology, has repeatedly dismissed his own comments as “locker room talk.” In doing so, he’s only dismissed his own apology.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  ‘Locker Room Talk’ is No Excuse: Christians, Trump, and the Election →

The late Chuck Colson was known for many things: his role in the Watergate scandal, his subsequent conversion to Christ; his work with prisoners around the world, and his efforts in promoting a Christian worldview.

But to his closest associates, Chuck was also known for his sense of humor. He loved practical jokes, and as odd as this sounds, jokes about bathroom mishaps—the kind of potty humor made famous by humorist Dave Barry.

So for this and many other reasons, I really wish Chuck were around to deliver this particular commentary.

You see, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, digging in the remains of what was once the biblical city of Tel Lachish, made a startling discovery that confirmed the biblical text in a most startling way: They found an ancient toilet.

To fully appreciate the significance of the find, we need to go back in time to the eighth century before Christ. King Hezekiah, one of only a handful of post-Davidic kings that earns the Bible’s seal of approval, initiated series of reforms aimed at eradicating syncretism in Judah.

At the heart of these reform efforts was eliminating what the Bible called “high places” or bamot in Hebrew. These were cultic sites containing an altar, usually located, as the English name suggests, on a hill or a ridge.

While ostensibly dedicated to the worship of YHWH, over time the sites, and the worship that occurred at them, became syncretistic: pagan deities were honored alongside YHWH. Thus we are told that asherim, or “Asherah Poles,” cultic objects dedicated to the worship of the Canaanite goddess of fertility, were erected at these sites.

Hezekiah was commended because “He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles.”

And that brings me back to the discovery at Tel Lachish. Archaeologists found a “large room that appears to have been a shrine. The room contained two four-horned altars, whose horns had been intentionally damaged.” Excavation leader Sa’ar Ganor “believes that the destroyed altars corroborate biblical references to King Hezekiah’s reforms: his efforts to centralize worship in Jerusalem and abolish it elsewhere.”

Continue reading BreakPoint – No Pooh-Poohing Biblical History: The Lachish Latrine →