01/14/2021
I’m tired of bias, of opinion pieces masquerading as reporting, of buried leads and hysterical fearmongering. Apparently, many Americans are tired of these things, too.
01/13/2021
In the end, concerns over the COVID vaccines are understandable. Ends do not justify immoral or unethical means, and ethical consideration is absolutely necessary, but it must be informed by truth rather than overtaken by fears or conspiracy theories.
01/12/2021
Disney's new film, Soul, offers a profound and subtle rebuke of one of our culture’s central and mistaken assumptions, that meaning can be measured by paychecks and popularity. In the end, the film echoes one of Christianity’s central insights: that all of life, when lived for a higher purpose, is sacred
01/11/2021
Recently, I was asked how we should respond to cases when a Christian leader or teacher is caught in sexual misconduct. Is it possible to separate the good that they’ve done and the truth they’ve taught, the person and their sin? And, what about when the perpetrator is gone and has no further opportunity to acknowledge his sins, repent, and seek forgiveness? On a Christian worldview analysis level, to borrow a phrase popularized by Christian educator Arthur Holmes, it is important to remember that “all truth is God’s truth.” In other words, if Ravi Zacharias ever said anything true in his life, and of course he did, he was not its source but only its medium. Any truth – all truth – comes ultimately from God, outside of time or place or context.
01/07/2021
Yesterday, when President-elect Biden said that the actions of the mob did not reflect America, I wish he were correct. But he wasn’t. We are not a moral nation. We are lawless. We are not a nation that cultivates the kinds of families able to produce good citizens. Our institutions cannot be trusted to tell us the truth or advance the good. Our leaders think and live as if wrong means are justified by preferred ends. Our churches tickle ears and indulge narcissism. Our schools build frameworks of thinking that are not only wrong, but foster confusion and division.
01/06/2021
Researchers at the Salk Institute recently implanted human pluripotent stem cells, or cells that can produce any kind of body tissue, in pig embryos.
01/05/2021
After recently discovering evidence of light in deep space, many scientists were left puzzled and searching for logical answers to what the unexplained glow was. Perhaps, it would be easier to see God in “the heavens” He made, if we weren’t so convinced of our ability to explain everything by purely naturalistic causes or even, as some do, to dismiss all supernatural causes. Maybe our gut instinct to look upward when we encounter the unexplained is the right one. If the heavens indeed “declare the glory of God,” we’d do well to listen.
01/04/2021
According to a recent article, an archeological team “re-erected two of the columns that had once held up the roof of the courtyard where the princess Salome is said to have danced.”
12/30/2020
The ideas of Critical Theory, especially since the horrific killing of George Floyd, have become a central part of our national conversation.
12/29/2020
C.S. Lewis once said that we should read three old books for every new one. I think we should read three C.S. Lewis books for every new one. He never faced the coronavirus, of course, but in the late 1940s, the world was coming to grips with another threat: nuclear annihilation. The bomb was only a few years old, and in the hands of sworn national enemies. The uncertainty of what exactly could happen, not to mention what might happen, was palpable.
12/28/2020
From the beginning, the sexual revolution has promised women that aggressively flaunting skin and sexuality was empowerment and that divorcing sex from marriage and procreation would be a means to freedom. In reality, it was men who got what they wanted: sexual pleasure without the burden of commitment or requirement of chivalry. For a brief moment a few years ago, it was almost as if that lie had been exposed. More and more women bravely came forward revealing how they’d been treated horrifically as “sexual objects” and such. But if Sunday’s performance is any indication, we have not learned our lesson.
12/23/2020
Christmas is about far more than a Child’s birth—even the Savior’s birth. It’s about the Incarnation: God Himself, Creator of heaven and earth, invading planet Earth, becoming flesh and dwelling among us.
12/22/2020
The book The Future of Christian Marriage features interviews with numerous Christian young people from seven countries. By being both forward-looking and firmly planted in history, Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus traces how marriage went from a natural institution bound up with childbearing and blessed by the Church to one that is now, like so many other things in our culture, determined by adult desires and largely defined (or should I say redefined?) by the state.
12/21/2020
The classic Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life is not just a film that reminds us to embrace the Christmas spirit, but it shares with us many valuable life lessons.
12/18/2020
Christianity has been the inspiration of some of the West’s greatest art—in ancient times and even in the middle of World War II.
12/17/2020
Snowflake adoptions involve adopting and implanting frozen embryos “left over” after IVF. Like pregnancy care centers that offer redemptive ways for people to confront the issue of abortion, embryo adoption is an amazing and redemptive response to a pre-existing brokenness. It’s not accurate, however, to call it a “solution.” Here’s why.
12/16/2020
Opera composer George Frideric Handel was a deeply religious man. One day, he decided to turn away from the human foibles common to his operas and instead use Scripture to inform his work. The result is one of the world’s great masterpieces, Messiah.
12/15/2020
Our talent and drive and even our charisma can often write checks that our character can’t cash. Err instead on the side of a quiet, faithful life instead of one of popularity and celebrity. Leave the stage before the applause starts. The applause of our Father, “who sees in secret,” is the only praise we need anyway.
12/14/2020
I’m ready to make a prediction about the 2020 election. No, this is a prediction I thought about making months ago, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to articulate it. Even so, I’m ready to predict that many people are going to regret how they talked about and treated others over the last year or more.
12/11/2020
This Christmas, let one of history’s greatest artists, remind you that all of our work should be done to the glory of God.
12/10/2020
An agnostic historian recently suggested that Christians who want to be heard in a skeptical culture: “Preach the weird stuff.”
12/09/2020
In a documentary called Religulous, Bill Maher claims that most of the story of Christ, especially the parts about His birth, were cribbed from pagan mythology. Here is why Maher’s claims are complete nonsense.
12/08/2020
In a culture that views children as products instead of image-bearers, many Christians feel lost when faced with fertility issues. The Church has, too often, simply failed young couples in this area, both in communicating a theology of children and in helping them navigate the ethical challenges of infertility.
12/07/2020
Famed singer Andrea Bocelli recently shared that while his mother was pregnant with him, she fell sick and was encouraged to have an abortion. She chose to go against the advice and carried her son to term, thus birthing one of the most talented singers of our time.
12/04/2020
As more and more people are forced to flee religious persecution around the world, the United States will need to admit more refugees. This is especially true of those fleeing persecution in China and Iran, where our ability to resolve crisis points on the ground is limited. This can be done without compromising our commitment to vet the situations and stories of those seeking refuge. Already, refugees are far more strictly vetted than others seeking to enter the United States.
12/03/2020
America’s fertility rate keeps falling further and further from the average rate of 2.1 required to maintain the population. While the reasons behind this falling rate are vast, one thing is certain, Christians must remind others of the centrality of marriage and the God-given good of children.
12/02/2020
To borrow a phrase philosopher Craig Gay uses in his book The Way of the Modern World, Westerners and Americans are “practical atheists.” A subtle, operational-level form of secularism, practical atheism is not necessarily to believe that God does not exist. Rather, it’s to live as if God does not exist. One major characteristic of “practical atheism” is anxiety. Anxiety is the inevitable reaction when we realize just how out-of-our-control this fallen world is, and how fragile our shoulders – which now bear the weight of the world without God – really are.
12/01/2020
Many Christians, have bought into what might be called “the inevitability thesis.” Nearly everything in our culture has convinced them to assume that it is futile for anyone to resist their same-sex attractions. And, any attempt to help someone, especially young people, reduce their behaviors and attractions is just as futile, and probably even illegal. Many legislators have adopted and courts have upheld bans on such things, but now, a ruling last week from the 11th Circuit court is challenging the inevitability thesis.
11/30/2020
Advent is a time to recall God’s utter and unstoppable faithfulness to His people. Though Israel failed to keep its covenant with God, made at Sinai and renewed on several occasions afterward, He always intended to keep His covenant with Abraham, that “through your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."
11/25/2020
When Christians use the term "free will," it often refers to the debate over whether we choose God or God chooses us. On the other hand, when the term "free will" is used by evolutionary biologists, the debate is over whether choice itself is real, whether it is an illusion produced by our brains.
11/24/2020
On November 3, Oregon became the first U. S. state to legalize “magic mushrooms” for therapeutic use, following the lead of a few cities like Denver, Oakland, and Ann Arbor. Almost immediately afterward, articles appeared advising investors on how to “take full advantage of this $100 billion (USD) market potential.” Our increasingly materialist culture rejects any God Who is authoritative and transcendent (i.e. who exists outside of the material world). Thus, the divine must be found “within.” Many think psychedelics can assist their search by making it that much easier to escape the constraints of reality, authority, and limitations.
11/23/2020
In Belgium, the residents of nursing and rest homes were, according to a new report, “abandoned” by government authorities as the coronavirus epidemic raged. Out of fear of overwhelming Belgian hospitals, only about half of COVID patients in nursing homes that needed to be hospitalized, were. What happened in Belgium is outrageous.
11/20/2020
Throughout history, Christians have faced demands to be silent. Throughout history, they refused. In Live Not By Lies: a Manual for Christian Dissidents, blogger and author Rod Dreher thinks Christians in the West are entering a season where we will not only have to decide whether we will be silent; we will have to decide whether we will allow ourselves to be forced into going along with what is not true, with lies.
11/19/2020
Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. Disconnecting sex from childbearing gave us abortion and abandonment. Disconnecting childbearing from marriage gave us a generation of fatherless children.
11/18/2020
A free market works not because wealth is valued, but because labor is. Jesus said we can’t serve both God and money and that it’s more difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus never said accumulating wealth itself is sinful. Exploitation of the poor is sinful. Looking to wealth for salvation and meaning is sinful. Failing to steward what we’ve been given and failing to care for those in need are sinful. When these potential downfalls are mitigated or avoided, a free market inspires people to give more.
11/17/2020
One of the most helpful frameworks I know of in wrestling with moral issues comes from T.S. Eliot. Before we can know what to do with something, we must know what that something is for.
11/16/2020
With medical decisions becoming increasingly financially charged and the popularity of euthanasia continuing to rise, Christians everywhere should be thinking about medical ethics, joining hospital ethics boards, running for office, and becoming health care workers. And every Christian should embrace our God-given and culturally-escalated task, in this crisis and beyond, of bearing witness to certain eternal truths: that every human being has inherent dignity and value, and no one should ever be sacrificed on the altar of "efficiency."
11/13/2020
A recent Christian Post article described how women, 69 percent of the time, are immediately offered an abortion when their child is diagnosed with Down Syndrome in utero. If they decline, they are asked again. And often, again. One woman reported being asked fifteen times! Government policies in countries like Iceland and Denmark have resulted in only a handful of children with Down Syndrome born each year. In fact, about 90 percent of children diagnosed with Down Syndrome in Europe are aborted. In the U.S., the best estimates are about 65 percent.
11/12/2020
Predictions of a COVID-induced divorce surge never materialized. And according to Dr. Bradford Wilcox, director of the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, divorce filings are down between 10 and 20 percent since last year.
11/11/2020
Scientists who assume that human exceptionalism is a religious hang-up will see any animal spotted resembling human behavior as evidence that there’s nothing exceptional about humans. This same commitment to disproving human exceptionalism is also at work in the search for extraterrestrial life. The view that best corresponds to reality is the Biblical view, described by the audacious proclamation of Psalm 8, that humans were created “little less than God ... and crown[ed] with glory and honor,” and the audacious job description described in Genesis, that humans have “dominion” over all creation, including the “birds of the air.”
11/10/2020
In addition to national, state and local leadership, voters also made decisions on over 100 ballot initiatives.
11/09/2020
This past Wednesday morning, the day after an election that is still not resolved, my friend Ed Stetzer challenged us, in direct and clarifying terms, what kind of church the world needs right now.
11/06/2020
In 2020, eugenicists may not be goose-stepping down the street in khaki uniforms, but they are not hard to find. While the word “eugenics” rightly offends our modern sensibilities, the eugenics impulse is alive and well, especially in the sciences and social policies of human reproduction.
11/05/2020
Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for what could be a momentous religious freedom case.
11/04/2020
Former Colson Center colleague and current Family Research Council Senior Fellow Joseph Backholm's admonition in his Facebook post is spot on: “The future of our country and the quality of our lives is not determined primarily by who is in public office. Politicians are the fruit of the tree, they are not the tree. Our future will be determined by the strength of our families, and we all have control over that.
11/03/2020
Today is Election Day. What will the outcome be? Well, thankfully, because we live in a free society, it all depends on you and me. If you have not voted yet, I encourage you to go and fulfill your Christian duty to be a good citizen and go vote. Now is not the time to buy into the lie that your vote doesn’t really matter.
11/02/2020
In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis warns of just how easily the enemy can use political engagement to confuse what are ends and what are means. Or, to use language we often employ at the Colson Center, when it comes politics, especially the high-stakes kind that defines the current climate, American Christians have a history of losing the Story in the chaos of the moment.
10/30/2020
These are times are dark. Everyone’s trust is broken. We don’t trust the news. We don’t trust people’s motives. Don’t trust what they say. It is so like the times of Isaiah, where he groans, “See, darkness covers the Earth, thick darkness over the peoples.” But, and here’s where you come in as an intercessor. "But the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn."
10/29/2020
Every available metric of social and mental health suggests that today’s kids are more depressed, more anxious, and feel more lonely and isolated than any generation before them. The last thing young people need is adults telling them that “no-strings-attached” sex is a good idea. Or even possible.
10/28/2020
Last week, the Dutch national health minister proposed that doctors should be permitted to euthanize “terminally ill” children under the age of thirteen.
10/27/2020
During Judge Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearings, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) expressed outrage after Barrett used the term “sexual preference” instead of “sexual orientation.” Hirono argued that the phrase sexual preference "is an offensive and outdated term…used by anti-LGBTQ activists to suggest that sexual orientation is a choice—it is not.” It seems, however, that Senator Hirono is the one who is actually behind the times on the whole sexual orientation vs. sexual preference issue.
10/26/2020
Last week, in a town hall discussion, the current frontrunner in the election for the presidency of the United States said, in absolute terms, that an eight-year-old boy should be allowed to identify as a girl, and the law and society should treat him as such. No one is laughing anymore.
10/23/2020
During a recent prayer gathering on the National Mall, Terry Beatley, recalled a story Chuck Colson told in a BreakPoint commentary 25 years ago.
The story, of how God changed the heart of one of our nation’s most notorious abortionists.
10/22/2020
Franch lawmakers recently passed a bill setting up labor protections for child social media stars. While protecting kids is always laudable, it feels a bit strange calling this new law a “win.”
10/21/2020
Former New York Times writer, Bari Weiss, recently published a piece warning of a “danger, this one from the left … one that has attained cultural dominance, capturing America’s elites and our most powerful institutions.”
“I am here to ring the alarm,” writes Weiss. “I’m here to say: Do not be shocked anymore … It’s time to accept reality, if we want to have any hope of fixing it.” Weiss describes a growing and institutionally enforced anti-Semitism, and proceeds to list a series of incidents that she says cannot be accurately understood as isolated, but instead as an essential and insidious component of the new liberalism, a “mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality.”
10/20/2020
A recent survey has found that nearly a third of self-described evangelicals do not believe that Jesus Christ is truly God.
10/19/2020
Last week, federal court judge Salvador Mendoza, an Obama appointee, blocked the state of Washington from automatically banning those with religiously based objections to department policy from becoming foster parents.
The department’s policies, wrote Mendoza, only burdens “potential caregivers with sincere religious beliefs,” since those with religious beliefs are likely to object to the policy. Even more, these policies probably “favor certain secular viewpoints over certain religious viewpoints,” which is also a violation of religious liberties.
10/16/2020
In a new analysis, scienists ask a simple question: Can we detect “fine-tuning” in biology as we can in physics? In answering this question the scientists found for the first time, a statistical framework for determining whether certain features in living things are fine-tuned or were “evolve-able.” Using this method, they demonstrate how functional proteins, cellular networks, and the biochemical machines found in cells exhibit evidence of “design.”
10/15/2020
Our culture-wide unfamiliarity with the great books can be directly attributed it our culture-wide unfamiliarity with the Good Book. An undergrad from a small liberal-arts school, Abel is consistently surprised that his peers do not know even the best-known accounts in the Bible.
10/14/2020
Our next Colson Center Short Course looks at four Christians -- the great Church Father St. Augustine of Hippo, Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the novelist Flannery O’Connor, and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr -- each of whom navigated through difficult cultural events. The course is titled “How Four Christians from History Confronted Cultural Chaos,” and begins next Tuesday, October 20th, and continues each Tuesday (except for election night) through November 17th.
10/13/2020
On July 1, Virginia enacted the “Virginia Values Act,” which bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. A companion law requires employers to include coverage for sex reassignment and “gender affirming” surgeries in their health plans. The Act provides an exemption for religious schools “owned, supported, controlled, or managed” by denominations or churches, but the exemption is severely limited.
10/12/2020
Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their creation of the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR.
10/08/2020
At the local level, our ballots decide more than just what taxes we pay, what resources schools receive, which roads are fixed, and the size of the police force. Today, our votes determine what behavior is incentivized by the state, what worldview is taught as fact in our schools, and in some places, which laws police will enforce.
10/07/2020
Since 2009, the number of embryonic stem-cell lines approved for federally funded research has grown from 60 to 484. Embryos were destroyed to create those new stem cell lines, and our federal tax dollars paid for it.
10/06/2020
World Rugby was evaluating the idea of letting trangender girls and women compete against biological girls and women in sports. In considering the idea, it appears that World Rugby has decided that trans athletes are at an advantage because of their biological build and will therefore not be permitted to participate in athletic compeitions for genders opposite of thier bological gender.
10/05/2020
A few weeks ago, a friend and listener asked what questions Christians should ask candidates. Because there is no perfect candidate but so many issues, casting an informed vote requires research. Since most of us will never get the opportunity to question presidential candidates (apparently, even if we were moderating the debates), we should be able to know how they might answer the questions based on the statements of public record.
10/02/2020
While the cultural indicators do point, I believe, to the further mainstreaming of pedophilia, a Christian worldview places even the most chaotic and distressing of moments within a larger Story. Christ has risen from the dead. He is Lord. And, He is making all things new. Thus, as Christian philosopher Alvin Pantinga reminds us, whenever we talk of evil, we are talking about a very real foe. But a defeated foe.
10/01/2020
During the debate, my friend Trevin Wax tweeted, “Neil. Postman. He saw this coming forty years ago,” referring to how the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, who described what happens in societies when societies entertainment replaces truth and celebrity-ism replaces virtue.
09/30/2020
Growing up in families without married parents, their well-being sacrificed for the sake of adult happiness, the kids have been the primary victims of our sexual experimentation. To cover our tracks, we’ve resorted to indoctrination, attempting to convince them of other myths, such as the idea that biological sex and their physical bodies are fully malleable. Kids today are literally taught to be skeptical of how they were made.
09/29/2020
At root, there’s more to this hatred of SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett than the legitimate disagreements and debate inherent to the nomination process. There’s even more to it than being potentially the third appointee of a President despised by so many. The savage incivility already being directed at Barrett can be traced back to Roe v. Wade. As Kim Colby, legal scholar for Christian Legal Society suggested last week on the BreakPoint podcast, the decision to legalize abortion has poisoned our political system and escalated court nominations to literal life and death issues.
09/28/2020
In one of our latest “What Would You Say?” videos, my colleague Brooke McIntire takes on the myth of “settled science.” Proposing and overturning theories is an ongoing part of the process. Even longstanding scientific consensus is vulnerable to new and contrary evidence, and scientists are fallible and biased human beings too.
09/25/2020
Dutch physician Bert Keizer seems to be having second thoughts about the deadly system he helped create. He is especially alarmed at the developments in Great Britain, where Conservative member of parliament Andrew Mitchell predicted that euthanasia could be legal there by 2025.
09/24/2020
This Sunday, September 27, hundreds of churches throughout America will be participating in a time dedicated to prayer and repentance. What’s being called “Repentance Sunday” has been organized and endorsed by the leaders from more than 50 churches and ministries.
09/23/2020
President Trump says he will announce his nominee for the Supreme Court by Saturday.
09/22/2020
Christians have both a civic and a Christian responsibility to vote. As my friend Tim Goeglin, vice-president of external and governmental relations for Focus on the Family, put it recently, to vote is the beginning of our civic duty of Christians.
09/21/2020
Historical ignorance not only prevents us from learning from the evils of the past, we risk not even being able to recognize the evils of the past when they reemerge in our time.
09/18/2020
In an event on Wednesday, Benjamin Watson, Rep. Tusi Gabbard and others called for the U.S. to send aid to Nigeria to help persecuted Christians.
09/17/2020
Two-thousand-and-twenty has been dubbed the "lost year" by some. But is there such a thing? This moment God has determined for us is challenging and chaotic. But He also determined us for this moment. And He’s with us.
09/16/2020
When President Trump endorsed the First Step Act, he said, “We’re all better off when former inmates can receive and re-enter society as law-abiding, productive citizens.” At last month’s Republican National Convention, Ivanka Trump called the First Step Act “the most significant criminal justice reform of our generation.”
09/15/2020
Over the next 12 weeks or so, with election season in full gear, we’ve planned a set of videos to tackle the various political and policy questions and issues that are front and center on people’s minds. These videos will not only equip Christians for conversations about the presidential campaign and the place of faith in the public square, but also about those issues central to state and local ballots, including abortion restrictions, education, economics, race, and civic responsibility.
09/14/2020
“Christianity,” however, as a revealed worldview, has an objective definition. Christianity centers ultimate reality and, therefore, ultimate authority, outside (not within) the created order, locates it in a Divine Personal Being who has made Himself known through what He has made, through Holy Scripture, and ultimately made known Himself through Christ Jesus. One might doubt that there is a God who has revealed Himself or that God has revealed Himself in these ways, and therefore reject Christianity. But because Christianity is a worldview that comes already carefully defined, it’s not open to mass-scale revisions.
09/11/2020
The sincere desire to eradicate dangerous genetic diseases is understandable, and even noble. The longing to heal reflects God’s image in us. Ethically sound and medically safe treatments should be pursued, but we should never proceed without full awareness of the human temptation to “become like God” as Genesis 3 tells us, “determining good and evil.”
09/10/2020
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, child sex trafficking includes the “recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining or advertising of a minor child for the purpose of a commercial sex act.” Of the roughly 24-thousand endangered runaways reported last year, estimates are that one in six were victims of sex trafficking. Often, traffickers are family members or family friends, such as parents who’ve lost custody or guardians looking to profit.
09/09/2020
Initially receiving rave reviews, feedback on Disney's live action Mulan has chilled considerably after reports that Disney filmed substantial portions of the movie in China’s Xinjiang province, with the blessing and cooperation of the Chinese Communist government.
Xinjiang is the home province of some 12 million Muslim Uighurs that live in China. According to the U. S. State Department, over one million of them have been moved to concentration camps where “they are starved, abused, tortured, electrocuted, raped and even killed.”
09/08/2020
Our culture’s disdain for and impatience with the disabled is just another example of what happens when life is devalued. Sometimes, it’s overt and cruel and other times, it takes the form of regarding those with disabilities as burdens and annoyances.
09/04/2020
Everything good and right and true exists in the light, according to Ephesians 5. Evil tries to hide itself, and hidden evil flourishes. Everything the abortion industry tries to hide, including the humanity of the fetus and the reality that this “procedure” kills, and just how brutal it is, we must expose.
09/03/2020
America has long been fertile ground for the creating and spreading of conspiracy theories. Sadly, however, QAnon, which offers a fear-based narrative, is finding fertile soil in churches.
09/02/2020
Recently, the Intercept reported that Lenovo, the world’s largest manufacturer of laptops, “has imported an estimated 258,000 laptops” built by a certain Chinese manufacturer named Hefei Bitland. Through this manufacturer, Lenovo “participates in a Chinese government program that provides factories with cheap labor from persecuted Uighurs.” “Cheap labor,” in this case, means “forced labor.”
09/01/2020
As Paul told the Ephesians, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Those forces are at work anytime there is dehumanizing injustice, in any form, including when peaceful protest becomes indiscriminate violence. And that’s why the Church must be the church, Christians must have a worldview big enough to understand that, in this case, neither politics nor policy offer long-term solutions.
08/31/2020
The difference between millions of people dying every day by natural causes and those who die by murder is intent. It is wrong to take an innocent human life… any innocent human life. Fertilized eggs, embryos, fetuses, newborns, teenagers and adults are all human beings.
08/28/2020
The anger directed at the Perrys reflects a sad fatalism that permeates both the LGBTQ movement and the so-called “gay-affirming” Christians. Their critique is rooted in a bad idea...
08/27/2020
After a college professor warned students in her syllabus that speaking out against a battery of social issues, including abortion and transgenderism among other things, would be grounds for dismissal from the class, the university stepped in and told the professor that she must change her syllabus as it hinders students' first amendment rights.
08/26/2020
A plane is most free not when I drive it, but when I fly it. That’s what is designed for. The same is true of human sexuality. We are not most free when we do whatever we want, but only when we are what God created us to be.
08/25/2020
For years now, experts have warned of the so-called “deaths from despair,” describing the increased rates of mental illness, depression, and addictions among many population segments in our country. In addition to these, however, there’s another pre-existing condition that often goes unmentioned: American hyper-individualism.
08/24/2020
John Stonestreet interviews Stephen Enada, director of the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON) about ICON’s dramatic new campaign “Nigeria’s Silent Slaughter” to raise awareness and bring pressure to bear on the Nigerian government.
08/21/2020
Sophie Scholl and her brother fought back against the Nazis in the 1940s. The Scholls were later captured and executed. The Scholl siblings refused to flee from their culture, as we are tempted to do today, and as such likely saved many lives.
08/20/2020
Most Americans take the existence of human rights for granted. We see them, to borrow a phrase, as “self-evident.” We can’t really imagine a world without them, or we look at places like China or North Korea with incredulity, as if it’s obvious that their way is clearly wrong. Instead, what these countries demonstrate is that there’s nothing “natural” about the idea of human rights. Rather they are the products of Judeo-Christian beliefs about the intrinsic dignity of the human person.
08/19/2020
While a large percentage of Americans dislike abortion, they are uncomfortable with making abortion illegal, a new study shows. Even those who think that abortion should be legal know that something wrong with it. And yet, they simply can’t imagine an alternative to the status quo.
08/18/2020
“Freedom of expression is in crisis,” the Philadelphia Statement begins. “Truly open discourse—the debates, exchange of ideas, and arguments on which the health and flourishing of a democratic republic crucially depend—is increasingly rare. Ideologues demonize opponents to block debates on important issues and to silence people with whom they disagree.”
This paragraph is an answer to the well-meaning Christians who, at times, ask whether it is appropriate to be involved in “political debates” over things like free speech or religious freedom. Part of the Christian’s calling is to steward and protect good things. Freedom of expression is one of those good things, and not just for us.
08/17/2020
According to a report, the “293 cases of persecution against Christians reported in the first six months of 2020 included five religious-motivated rapes and six religiously-motivated murders.”
08/14/2020
The next opportunity for the church to, as Chuck Colson often said, “be the church,” is to parents and children as the school year starts. “The Church that figures out how to care for kids and parents,” Pastor Rick argued, “will have the ear of America.” I think he’s right, and even more, I needed to be reminded that despite all the chaos of this culture moment, the work of the Church cannot be stopped.
08/13/2020
In an age of information, “extremely online people,” meaning those who rely primarily on social media for their political news, are among the least informed and most easily-deceived groups in America.
08/12/2020
According to a study conducted last week, people who struggle to identify with their biological sex are at a higher risk of struggling from mental-health disorders. In fact, they are “more than six times as likely to have been hospitalized after a suicide attempt” as others.
This study was not the first to highlight the significant rates of depression and suicidal ideation among those who struggle with gender dysphoria. In fact, the high correlation between mental health struggles and the transgender community is agreed upon by all sides. Incredibly contentious, on the other hand, is the best way to help these people.
08/11/2020
One problem with the sperm donation industry is that it dehumanizes men and children. The God-given ability to procreate is transformed into a crude financial transaction. As is the case with egg donation, the way the “product” is marketed dehumanizes image-bearers, reducing them to a list of so-called “desirable qualities, such as height, hair color; supposed athletic ability, or where they went to college. This isn’t some “enlightened” new way to make a modern family. It’s re-branded eugenics.
08/10/2020
Christian education begins with Christian assumptions about life and the world, aims for Christian goals, and is governed by Christian methodologies. In both their personal beliefs and their public lives, we hope to help students love God with heart, mind, soul and strength, and love their neighbors as themselves. Like all of us, Christian educators need ongoing training and tailored professional development to serve the unique challenges of their vocation.
To serve this incredibly important calling, the Colson Center has partnered with the Association of Christian Schools International and the International Alliance for Christian Education, two leading Christian education organizations, to offer a free, online, professional development program for schools and homeschool parents called “Worldviews and Cultural Fluency.”
08/07/2020
“The issue of abortion,” says Obianuju Ekeocha, the founder of Culture of Life Africa, “has already been decided by many African countries (who) have decided that abortion is an attack on human life at its earliest stages.” On top of that, African culture includes a strong preference for large families.
Rejecting African values and culture, Western abortion advocates instead parallel the worst colonialists of the 19th-Century who claimed to bring “Civilization, Christianity, and Commerce” to unenlightened natives.
08/06/2020
Each Wednesday morning between August 12 and November 4, which is the morning after the 2020 election, the Colson Center will host a national prayer time, via webinar. We invite you to join us, each week, to pray first and foremost for God’s mercy, that He would revive His church, that He would bring about renewal of righteousness, that He would empower us to courageously offer protection for the most vulnerable, to champion reconciliation across our deepest divides, and that He would allow us to be instruments in the sustaining of religious freedom and the national recovery of the family.
08/05/2020
Physician-assisted suicide is on the rise around the world. In his book The Thanatos Syndrome, Walker Percy described how a society devolves to the point of thinking that killing patients instead of healing them is compassionate.
08/04/2020
Beijing’s treatment of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang Province qualifies, in every way, as genocide. Writing in Newsweek, Israeli Human Rights Lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky didn’t hesitate to call the Communist Party’s actions “genocide,” pointing especially to the “forced sterilizations, abortions and intrusive birth prevention.” These actions alone meet the requirement for genocide and have led to “the population growth rates in the two largest Uyghur prefectures [to fall] by 84% between 2015 and 2018.”
08/03/2020
While we all must navigate the issues of race, sexuality and gender, criminal justice, political divisions, and other markers of our fallen human nature that dominate this cultural moment, pastors face expectations that many of us don’t. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this phrase on social media recently: “If your pastor doesn’t preach about X from the pulpit this Sunday, it’s time to find a new church.” Same phrase, but the X changes with the headlines.