You're listening to Breakpoint This Week, where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian perspective. Today we're going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of Prison Fellowship by Chuck Coulson. We're also gonna talk about the cutest video of a little girl watching her mom and dad get married and what that tells us about family. We're so glad you're with us this week. Stick around.
Yeah. Welcome to Breakpoint This Week. From the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street, president of the Coulson Center. The Chuck Coulson Center for Christian Worldview, as we know. And John, this week is a big anniversary.
50 years ago this week, Chuck Coulson. The founder of our organization also filed the paperwork to found Prison Fellowship. 50 years, that is a big milestone. Yeah, a couple years ago. Or when was it?
Gosh, not too long ago. We talked about 50 years since his conversion, and it wasn't that long ago. And it wasn't that much time between. The time that he committed his life to Christ and the founding of this organization. And there's a lot of things to say about this.
Number one is happy anniversary to Prison Fellowship. We're so glad you're doing well. We were birthed. Out of that organization, we're no longer a part of that organization, but at the same time. Are thrilled that that part of Chuck's legacy is carried on and carried on so well.
The story is kind of funny because the story goes that he was on his way out of prison, having served time for Watergate-related charges, that he was challenged. Oh, you're a big shot. You big shots when you leave prison. You always forget about small people like us. And Chuck swore to this guy that he would not.
And that guy swore to him that he would. And we're all pretty sure that the reason the largest prison ministry in the world was eventually founded was because somebody told Chuck Colson that he wouldn't do it. And that's kind of Chuck Colson redeemed in a nutshell in a lot of ways. I think there's a lot to say also just about how closely connected. This History, prison fellowship ministries as to Chuck's own story, not only going to prison, but mostly meeting Christ.
Now, we talked about it in a breakpoint this week and had somebody post on Facebook that they were sure. That Chuck's whole conversion scam. was in order to be a grifter and to take advantage of weak-minded people that he only found faith out of poor motivations. And I to which I say, man, he He played that ruse for a really, really, really long time. Just playing the long game, yeah.
Man, he was. I'm not sure how that actually is a social benefit to accept Christ. It's kind of like, oh, you know, those early Christians, they just. followed Christ in the Roman Empire so that they could have power and money and prestige, or they all they all got killed.
So it didn't quite work out that way. I think his life of faithfulness really speaks for itself. Yeah, I was thinking about him and starting prison fellowship last fall. After the killing of Charlie Kirk, because there were a handful of voices that came out. I remember Ben Shapiro, notably.
You know, I feel like most people Went down if they, if they weren't already familiar with Charlie Kirk, they went down a rabbit hole of looking into his work and including me, just watching old videos of him and trying to make sense of everything. And found a deeply religious, committed Christian, especially towards the end of his life. And Ben Shapiro came out and said something like, If America turns out to be more Christian, that will be better for everybody. If we, you know, he was kind of advocating for cultural Christianity because Ben Shapiro himself is not a believer in Jesus. And I remember thinking, you know, I agree sociologically, people who have Christian convictions or even who act like them tend to.
act in ways that are more Prone toward human flourishing than people who don't. This is the some cultures are better than others, you know, kind of argument. But If the action is not ultimately motivated by true belief in Jesus, then it will be short-lived, any kind of social gain or social safety. And I correct me if I'm wrong, John, but I feel like that was a lot of the motivation for Chuck and what I've read about. His desire and his reasoning behind launching prison fellowship was that.
He saw just kind of the demeaning nature of life in prison.
Some of it being, you know, things that should change through policy, and others. Just being a hallmark of the situation that people found themselves in. And he ultimately wanted to see fewer people going to prison. And the way towards that was worldview change, was to. lead people to Jesus because only through true submission of your life to Jesus.
Does your actions change for the rest of your life and for the long haul? Obviously, it's not like a formula that you just become a better person and you never get in trouble or sin again. But it just seemed like that was the drive for him: we tackle this issue of incarceration. By evangelizing our brothers and sisters. Yeah, that was definitely part of it.
I mean, part of it is just it didn't think that how we were thinking about. Incarceration and punishment and imprisonment was wholly right. I mean, part of this just reflects a lot about Chuck. as well, not just kind of saying, well, Look, what's wrong with the way people are treated behind bars? What's wrong with A society that's coming apart and crime is on the increase.
But what are the resources that are missing? And he was a student of ideas, he was a student of history, he was a student of theology, and that informed it in a lot of ways. First, that Christians belonged in this mess, right? I mean, that's in and of itself an unusual thing to say Christians. you know, are doing their best when they're running into the brokenness, into the plague, and not away from the brokenness.
And he thought the brokenness was increasing. The more he got into the prisons, the more the prison population in the United States in particular was exploding. And that was primarily he would often advocate for. a theory of of social breakdown. That could be traced back to the, and I'm going to quote here how he would quote a group of secular Jewish researchers who looked at the explosion of incarceration.
and ultimately explained it by hold on to your hats People are doing bad things.
Now, that sounds really simplistic, but it's in direct contrast with the larger theories that would say things like, oh, it has to do with racism or it has to do with education or it has to do with poverty. Not that those things didn't play some sort of factor. But that ultimately what Chuck Coulson pushed through, even as he was pushing for things like just sentencing and you know against Kind of the three strikes, you're out sort of penalties that we now see are problematic. And for life improvement behind bars, he was a big advocate, for example, on legislation that would stamp out something like prison rape. in the epidemic there.
I mean, he he did a lot of these things. But he also was doing it as he was witnessing the explosion of. Crime and the explosion of the prison population. And so he would say: look, the ultimate cause is. the lack of moral formation in the morally formative years.
Now, what's that sound like? In other words, we do bad things. And why do we do bad things? It's because the culture is coming apart. and we're not catechizing the next generation into doing the right thing.
Now, you know, to your point. He did not ever advocate for purely cultural Christianity. He himself was an example of a radically changed individual. But he did believe that the personal A faith had public implications that a personal transformation would lead to cultural. transformation.
And we all knew, and this doesn't have to be a mystery. Tom Holland's given us all we need on this, that the world's a whole lot better after Christianity influenced culture than it ever was before Christianity influenced culture. And none of us really want to go back to the pre-dignity. uh era uh you know prior to You know, this influence of Christianity in the Western world. But but he believed that That meant the Christians belonged in this process.
that Christians should not keep their faith private. And to kind of explain too how he thought about how the whole thing should work. is He realized too, and that's why he advocated for a different understanding of justice. This goes back to something we've talked about. A lot, which is we can use the same vocabulary, but not the same dictionary.
So he carefully defined justice. And what is justice? If you think about how crime has been treated, particularly at the time that he kind of started working. That it was just really a matter of two parties, that there was an offended government. And then there was a perpetrator and the government would punish the perpetrator.
And that, you know, was basically what the whole system was kind of built around, that framing. And he suggested something else, you know, that Listen, not only do you have the perpetrator, but you have the person who was actually wronged. And you have the larger community that the trust has been broken in that community. And then you have the state. And the state's job is to secure the sort of justice that needs to happen and create context for all that reconciliation to happen, because most people who commit a crime are going to go back into the community.
The theory that if we put them in a closed, confined space when they're partly antisocial with a whole bunch of people who are as or more antisocial and poof magically, they're going to be better when they come out just because they were locked in a room for a while. I mean, of course, that doesn't make sense. And restoration programs have to take into consideration the idea of Reconciliation. Coming to an understanding of who someone is, why they did what they did, asking for forgiveness. And that's why the Prison Fellowship.
Programming has been so absolutely successful. I'll say one more thing, and this is also a way to advocate, I think. for churches to continue to be involved with prison fellowship. But it's an example. Of seeing a bigger picture, seeing this through a Christian worldview.
Many churches. have participated in and many Christians that are listening to this would have probably participated in the Angel Tree program. There's a wonderful story, by the way, of another woman who was incarcerated who Chuck Colson came into contact with and took a program that she had started. And it's just a really wonderful story of Mary Kay Beard. But people who have participated in Angeltree often We'll describe it as, you know what, what we're doing is providing presence.
for children whose parents are incarcerated on Christmas. And that's not exactly what Angel Tree is. Angel Tree is. providing presents to children. whose parents have been incarcerated.
From the parents It is basically providing that reconciliation, that connective tissue between children and their parents. That's such an important thing in what's called breaking the cycle of crime. And it's been a wonderful reason that Angel Tree has been so. you know, incredibly successful. And of course, now they do other things.
In terms of camping and all kinds of other things that they make possible. But see, that's an understanding that's based on a Christian worldview that's more than just kind of traditional charity. It's realizing that the most important thing for this son or this daughter. whose mom or or dad is in prison is Is that they can stay connected, that they can see that their mom or dad remembers them, that they're still loved, that. that their mom or dad is doing what they can to to do to do better.
Because you know what? When that mom or dad gets out and gets back into the neighborhood, there's still going to be the mom and the dad. Right? Nobody else can take that place.
So now sometimes you know other interventions need to be done, but what a what a wonderful thing so Listen, happy anniversary prison fellowship. If you're listening, like Sign up for Angel Tree. Be a part of this with your church, with your family. And and and what I also love, and I'll end with this, and I know That the team over there is still committed. Chuck was really committed, and it's really tempting.
And it has been tempting, I think, throughout Prison Fellowship's history. to downplay the share the gospel part. And upplay the NGO kind of way that Prison Fellowship does its work, a non-governmental agency. You know, involved in something like a social breakdown. Listen, I think Christian ideas need to be brought to bear.
But to your point, that cultural Christianity is not enough. Prison Fellowship has remained committed to bringing the gospel. To having events, to having conversations. The best pictures of Chuck Colson are not him speaking. in front of tens and thousands of people.
It's him on his one knee outside of a closed cell. Sh reading reading the Bible with a prisoner. and the number of people uh that uh we could just go down the list. whose lives have been impacted by this organization at a time when they were just broken. It's really hard to quantify.
And at the center of it is the life-changing, life-transforming message of Jesus Christ.
So, encouragement to my brothers and sisters over at PF never to walk away from that central aspect of what they do. Yeah, we're so grateful you're there.
Well, John, let's share one other quick sweet story before we break. There was a video that I'm sure you saw was kind of going viral this week. Of a little girl, she's a three-year-old, who was being shown the wedding video of her parents. And she she gets very sweetly emotional. She just is so happy to see her mom and dad at their wedding, which is so cute.
She obviously wasn't around for it. But Katie Faust, a friend of ours over at Them Before Us, who advocates for children's rights so diligently. Really saw a poignant example here of why kids need their mom and dad and the joy and stability that comes from. Not just having your mom and dad in your life, but having them be married to each other, having them in your home. And having them express love to each other.
She shared, Katie shared in a post on Substack about this. several quotes from researchers and others who say You know, so this one in particular from a family therapist and a marriage researcher named Pat Fagan, who says: when a child sees their mother loving their father, They feel like their mother is loving them. When they see their father loving their mother, they feel like their father is loving them. It's the only time in the human experience where you can be loved indirectly. It's such a powerful testament to family.
Well, it is. Listen, there's. It would be easy just to say, oh, isn't that sweet and keep going and miss some of the important points that Katie and others, I think, have pointed out here. I was going to ask you, though, did you ever show your daughters your wedding video? My wedding video is lost to history, unfortunately.
I do not know what happened to the actual footage. We have showed them lots of pictures. They mostly can't believe their dads that their dad did not have a beard. They're still very confused. They're still that he had.
Well, yeah, you can see that. But they ask to see them not infrequently. Like it clearly means something to them to see them.
Well, here's what I thought. I appreciated the comments by Pat that Katie pointed out about how. This is a way that kids feel loved indirectly, and there's really no other way that a kid feels loved indirectly. in the same way, right? Like getting more stuff is still Not a way that that same sort of security comes through.
Or that, or that there's really no other human relationship where seeing two other people love each other communicates love to you other than parent and child. Right. I mean, you don't have that same sort of transference. I guess I was thinking about this, and the thing that kept coming back to me was how this was a piece of evidence, a blatant, obvious piece of evidence, because this is not an uncommon reaction. You might have some six or seven-year-old boys who watch a wedding video like that, even of their parents, and go, oh, gosh, you know, and roll their eyes.
Yeah, you guys cut it. Yeah. And even if they respond that way, there's still. Which, by the way, my son has not infrequently responded that way to. Demonstrations of affection between my wife and I, but also smiles goofily in the middle of it, right?
It's not a pure disgust, it's like an appropriate disgust for a pre-adolescent boy. But but I I was thinking how this thing, which is not an uncommon experience to see. uh a child responding this way and so many married couples have. how that just absolutely blows out of the water. the persistent myth Of the sexual revolution, particularly as we started to experiment.
with relational and family arrangements. The the myth being the kids will be fine. We said that over and over and over, and it took various forms during various chapters. Like, for example, let's just look at no fault divorce. The kids'll be fine.
Kids need Happy Parents not married parents, is what we were told. It's better that their parents are happy and not married. I look at this and say, Can you go and show me any video through the history of the world? were little girls of that age. or thirteen or fourteen or fifteen.
having just been told their mom and dad are going to split up. says, oh, well, at least you'll be happy. Do do do you know what I mean? It it it it just was a A Proclamation And look, I understand that marriages sometimes break apart. I wish they never did.
But I know one group that wishes they never did. No matter if there's quote-unquote justification, biblical or otherwise. No matter if individuals are going to be happy. You're not going to see a video. Where a kid is crying tears of joy because they've just heard, oh, My mom and dad.
They're finally going to be happy because they no longer have to be married to each other. You know, it's just not going to happen. Or even to take it. To take it even further, like I could show my girls and have, much to their chagrin, Videos of me, like when I was in college, I went bungee jumping. I still can't believe I pulled that off and I would never do it again, right?
But I'm proud that I did.
So I show it to them. They really don't care. I was enjoying myself. Like what I'm trying to say, you can show your kids videos of you doing something cool that made you very happy and they don't care in the way that they do your relationship. I disagree.
I have shown my kids one video of you doing something pretty cool. They thought it was pretty awesome. What were you doing? Describe it. I was making three pointers to win a game.
And okay, that's pretty sweet. That's pretty sweet. It was pretty cool. Yeah, it was kind of a moment. If I may, that's, but don't you think, like, okay, so they're watching it and they're like.
That's awesome. My dad rules. That was cool. They're not like. Emotional.
They're not like happy about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not like bringing meaning into their lives. Right.
That I had a great moment, right? Right. But it's just, it's just, I feel like that video might have been doctored. I think I need to see that in order to. That video is out there.
I just thought about, though, that. How nefarious and broken and upside down and consequential that myth. that the kids will be fine, particularly This version of it. That kids need happy parents, not married parents. And then you you kind of think about the choice then to manufacture children and commercially buy and sell them in some form in the embryonic stage.
that oftentimes is enabled by and vitro and surrogacy. And you think that there's just no The there there's no mirror. That's going to demonstrate to them something what something like this will. You know. I it just is a You're certainly not going to get the same feeling.
I can't imagine. There's going to be a video of a child crying tears of joy in the same way. when they see a picture Of her quote-unquote two dads laying in the hospital bed as if one of them had just given birth. You know, you just, it's just so observably different. And that than the pure kind of reaction that is seen in this video.
Even if you believe and there's reason to, given kind of I I didn't see the, you know, exactly the video that The girl was actually watching. Like, it may have been an obnoxious, gaudy, you know, way overdone wedding. You know, it could have been just a disaster of a wedding where the priest is drunk and the groomsman falls over. You know, and and but the reaction is still there's something happening there that elicits the same reaction. Even if there's something crazy, you're like, oh, there was a.
It was outside and it started to downpour and everybody had to run. None of those circumstances change anything. And you just don't get. A carbon copy of that reaction from all these other manufacturings. that we have done to marriage and family.
And it's such a universal thing. That's like, there were so many comments on that video that were like, I remember seeing my kids. Yeah, I remember seeing that myself, or my kid had the same reaction. That's why I asked you if you showed your kids. Yeah, right.
Well, the other thing I was thinking of is that my girls constantly ask me, even though they know all these answers, like it's a dance we do. They want to hear about when I found out I was pregnant with them. Who was the first person you told? Did your belly get really big? They love to look at pictures of my big old belly with them in it.
They want to hear about the night they were born. I always, I remember the first thing I said to each of them and they want to hear it again. They ask me these things. They know the answers. But they love talking about it.
And it's something universal. I remember doing that with my mom. This is not a one-off or like a personality quirk. It's because there's something in it that's communicating to them that they're a person who was born into a family that they immediately belong to. And that they were from the beginning.
Yes, exactly. And that they're safe still in that network. Like that the woman who was like crying tears of joy when I found out I was pregnant with you That's still how I feel about you, and I'm sitting here with you right now. Like it clearly means something to them, and it's really viewed twice. No kidding, the woman who just couldn't wait, so she told her barista.
At a coffee shop first, twice. My wife literally did that. You are not going to believe this, but I did the same thing. And I still and I told her. And I like blurted it out, right?
And she was kind of, we did not know each other very well. This was my neighborhood coffee shop and she'd seen me, and she was clearly like a little uncomfortable. And I was like, I'm sorry, I just haven't told anybody yet. And she was very sweet and very excited. And I still see her because she owns that coffee shop.
And every time she sees Ellie, who was my youngest and who I was referring to, she's like, I can't believe it's been that many years. It's a very sweet story. And Ellie loves to see her. But yeah, there's something about those baristas. Yeah, yeah.
Let's take a quick break, John. We'll be right back with more breakpoint this week. Hey, breakpoint listeners. In May, over 2,500 men and women from 47 states and 8 different countries joined us for the Colson Center National Conference to explore what it means to be called by God to this time and place. If you weren't able to join us, I'm excited to let you know that you can unlock all the recorded sessions from this year's conference with a gift of any amount now through August 8th.
Get your digital access today by visiting colsoncenter.org/slash July. We're back on breakpoint this week.
Well, John, in that last segment, we were talking about being born into a family and what that communicates to people. And usually something that everybody craves, which is belonging and community and love.
Well, on the other side of that story, there was a really gutting piece in NPR. I don't know that it was supposed to be gutting. At least I don't know that they wanted to frame it that way. But this is about something that they're calling Solo Agers. The headline is Solo Agers are a growing group.
Changes that would help them could help everyone. And it starts by interviewing this elderly man. Who was a member of a homosexual couple and whose partner passed away recently? And obviously, they had no children. And so now he's growing old on his own.
And, you know, he talks, the reporter goes on to talk about the concerns with something like that. You know, people who have children have kind of built-in caregivers or people to visit them or people to help them keep up their house. And this presents an issue for, you know, the healthcare industry and the caregiving industry and this kind of thing. And then they go on to do. what so frequently happens in stories like this, which is to like reverse engineer family.
They're like, we have this new insight in that people would benefit from having other people around them when they get older. And so what we should do and what this gentleman is trying to do is we should create these, we're going to call them villages. And it's like networks of elderly people who can help each other and can be together, you know, and help each other with things. You know, on its own, a great idea. My neighborhood has something called Village Connections, and it's exactly this kind of thing.
And it's lovely. Like, my. One of my elderly neighbors, some of her family members live quite far away.
So I know this has been a lovely thing for her and a way for her to make friends. The idea that this is a solution to the problem of people not having children or of severing their own family ties. On purpose, or of leaning into this chosen family phenomenon, and that if we can just set up the right infrastructure, usually with some input from the state, then we'll solve this loneliness crisis. This isn't a result of our behavior or our Fertility crisis, or whatever else. It's just, we have a way to fix it.
And it's this. It's really sad. You know, there was a story out of Japan a couple years ago. And of course, Japan, if you look at the demographic realities there, compare them to the demographic realities and the trend lines that we've been on, they're accelerated past where we are pretty dramatically, but still in the same direction. with some of the same consequences.
But there was a story that broke there about Older ladies committing petty crimes. And the reason that they would do this in multiple offenses was that so that they could go. and be imprisoned for a couple days. And that way they would have somebody to talk to. They were just so lonely, they were committing crime.
Oh, so when you first told me about this, it sounds unbelievable, but I would just encourage our listeners to research that because this is a real actually happened. Yeah, no, we don't, we don't make everything. I make some stuff up, but I don't make everything like the three-pointers, the three-point shots. That's not made up, but it was an incredible thing. It's amazing to me, though, that initially when I first saw that, there was a direct connection then that was made to the demographic realities.
Here, not so much. I mean, there is a little bit of connection made to lifestyle choices, but of course, the presumption. that runs throughout the article. is that these lifestyle choices are completely ours. And we should be able to make whatever choice that we want and be free from.
Remember Osgines' framing of the difference between freedom from and freedom for. This is a freedom from approach that we should be able to be free from the consequences of our own decisions.
So I should be able to make choices that will inevitably lead to a culture and a lifestyle of loneliness later on without having that loneliness that is coming out of the autonomy that I have chosen. Let's be really clear that this solo aging phenomenon is the reality. And A, it's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. There's going to be more here.
B, it has to do with people choosing Not to marry? First, second, people choosing not to have children, and then third, people choosing not to have. Enough children.
So we're also talking here about the reality, not just of parents not having children but parents not having multiple children so people not only don't have their own kids, they don't have aunts, they don't have uncles, they don't have cousins and nephews and other sorts of family. relationships. And of course, we do live in a modern culture where Geography and occupation will oftentimes separate a unit. Of an extended family. And of course, we haven't even brought into this the reality that you and I have talked about for the last couple of years, which is.
you know, canceling your family. And the choice to do that because they voted for the wrong person or whatever. And now you're lonely, but then you have some reality. I remember years ago, there was a piece. I believe it was from Wesley J.
Smith. It sounds like him, who writes a lot on bioethics and biotechnologies and so on. And he was talking about the experiments that we were doing with reproductive technologies, particularly. in genetics. And he there was a report about an embryo that was grown.
You know, for 12 or 14 cells and then destroyed, but it had genetic material from a pig and a human. And you hear these, and you're like, was that, I mean, this was 25 years ago. And you're like, was that even a real story?
So if somebody remembers this in First Things, It's really one of the best written pieces on this I've ever read. It's kind of like satire. But he basically ends it, unless I'm mixing pieces here. He's like, you know, the the It's this generation that we aborted at a crazy rate, that we experimented on at a crazy rate. And we're going to ask them to change our diapers when we're old.
Right? There's the reality of the demographic changes that we've made. And then there's just The willingness when we make autonomous choices i mean Think about all those. Those lifestyle pieces and the women's written by middle-aged women saying, I wish I never had a child, and I wish I'd never been married, and all that sort of stuff, right? Who write about how they made the best decision, divorcing, and then becoming kind of a sexual experimenter and all that.
You know, all those pieces that are published weekly. It's kind of like. I was tempted to be super sarcastic. It's almost like it's the same piece that could have been. You know, just changed that, you change the name and republish it again and again and again.
I mean, do we really think that That child that was just slandered. by his mom is then going to turn around and really be super excited about There's just so many people. I feel like more so than even resentment in that case. It's like if you're. Mom or parent is setting the example that the most important person in your life is you and doing what you want to do.
Nobody wants to care for an ailing parent. I mean, it's hard emotionally and logistically and everything.
So. By your own standards that you're teaching your kids, of course, they're not. You should tell them not to help. Yeah, the math's not going to be in your favor. Yeah, no, no, no, that's a really, that's a really important point, too, and just in terms of the values.
And then what happens? And that's what this piece is really written about. And it's only part of the story. You have to then come up with a Workaround, right? You got to come up.
with a solution. There's been an age-old solution for managing the majority. of people in this situation. And now That's not there.
So what do you do?
Well, that's where we get AI companion robots. And that's where we get doctor assisted suicide, medical assistance, and dying, right? Things have to be done in a more efficient way. There have to be affordable shortcuts that can take the place or substitutes that can take the place of the thing that's actually there that's supposed to take care of these things. Yeah, and a strange part of this story in NPR2, which I just found to be a weird editorial oversight.
But is that this man that they focus the story on, who's in his 60s and getting older, and his partner just died? They kind of reveal at the end of the piece that, oh, every don't worry about him too much because every once in a while his mom comes over. And I'm like, okay, so but is he like so? Is his mom aging alone? And does his mom, do we have concern for his mom?
Is he helping his mom? Or were he felt comfortable giving this interview, talking about how the state, and a lot of the story really goes into like, this is a very thinly veiled jab at like cuts to Medicare and Medicaid funding and if the government really cared, whatever.
So it's like, He's very much and the reporter like Trump owes me because I'm getting older and he's cutting the funding of what I'm saying. That's my point of the freedom, right? Like you have to have a big state or a big tech solution to this. Because it's it's I have chosen this and the government has to allow this choice and then subsidize this choice. In the long run, it's really something.
I will say, though, that this is an incredible opportunity for Christians, right? It's an incredible opportunity for the church to be the church. The church has always can I ask you about that?
Okay, so I agree with you, and I'm immediately going to imagining like the church welcoming in elderly members and being people who visit, and all of that is beautiful and good. But I have sensed that some of the normalcy of Outsourcing the care of our parents. And I need to be really careful here because. That is just going to be absolutely necessary for a lot of people, depending on your parents' needs or situation. But that it's so normal to do that, even in the church.
Do you think we... Teach enough, or that we really feel the responsibility that I think we ought to feel.
Well, we've talked about the larger conversation of what theologians have for centuries talked about the art of dying from a Christian theology. And the um Part of the art of dying is the art of aging and the art of caretaking and all that sort of stuff. I think Christian theology is rich with the resources. That can be brought to bear here. But if the way you teach quote unquote theology, Is with the same value system of how you can feel closer to God and feel fulfilled and meaningful, and not in terms of our outward relationships and the responsibilities that come.
As we are members of society, then we're never even going to get to this conversation. And my guess is, if we're not asking, Premarital couples and their counseling in many churches about whether they understand the inherent biological realities of the connection that God designed between marriage and procreation. If we're not even getting to that, we're not getting down the line and saying, List, what is God expecting here?
So I think that's a factor. I do think culture is a factor, and I don't think that's necessarily a matter of intent. I was having this conversation just this week. If you're um If if You decide to follow your kids in order to stay invested in your grandkids' lives, then you're going to be in town. But if you say, you know, my lot in life is to retire and move to Florida.
And your kids aren't going to move to Florida with you, right?
So then, how do you actually make that happen? I don't think that changes the responsibility, but it's kind of like schooling. It's the parental responsibility and the parents then have, I think, some resources to which outsource. Uh that that you know the the specifics. I also think though That another thing that's become Um you know, an issue that needs to be considered is This understanding of subsidiarity, which is a rich part of Catholic social teaching, usually on a communal level in society, but.
That basically whoever's closest to the problem is the one responsible, you know, to do it. And I do think that The first and closest one is the marital relationship, right?
So a spouse is to take care of a spouse. If a spouse is there to take care of the spouse, then that's the spouse's job. The kids then step in and provide additional assistance. And then the next ring and neighbors and friends and so on.
So I think that framing is there, and that Christians themselves should take that framing as seriously as possible. But If we're Christians kind of in the network and there's good that we can do and we don't do it, scripture says that's a. I think then the potential, I used to challenge homeschool families like this. Because homeschool families are rightly very, very concerned with taking care of their own kids. Like, well, what about the kid with the broken home?
That's your neighbor. Do you have a responsibility for them? And I think the answer is yes. Is it the same responsibility? No.
There's a lot of parents would say, it's not my, you know, not my circus, not my monkeys kind of thing. And uh, but you know, I think Jesus kind of enlarges our circus and the number of monkeys that we're supposed to at least have some level of investment in. Yeah, agreed. Hi, I'm Deb from Fort Collins, Colorado. I'm a cornerstone partner because the Coulson Center is a beacon of light in a dark cultural time.
I love being challenged and equipped to engage every part of life from a Christian worldview. Join me and more than a thousand others in becoming a Cornerstone partner today at ColsonCenter.org/slash Cornerstone. Yeah. Well, John, let's pivot. I want to talk about.
This debate at the Oxford Union. I'm sure you saw this clip going around this week. The Oxford Union hosted a debate about whether the West should be reticent to accept. You know, more Islamic culture.
So, whether we should be concerned about the influence of Islamic culture in the West. And people were arguing for and against. And there was this, the clip that went viral in particular was a clip from the. side saying, no, we there's no cause for concern, this is something to celebrate. And this person said, you know, you can, you know, that our religion, being the Muslim religion, is in fact a religion of peace and is not to be feared because there is an angry mob outside of the Oxford Union right now of Muslim people who are mad about you guys speaking here and they haven't physically hurt you.
And this was not a rousing call to confidence. In fact, some might say this made the opponent point. Yeah. Um but I'm I was thinking about this particularly as we watched The election results in Michigan this week. And we're not here to talk politics in particular, but.
But there was a surprising political victory in Michigan of a candidate who has really embraced some of the Islamic and far left rhetoric. condemning America, which is surprising. but seems like a growing issue. I mean. The video was the definition of a self-own, obviously.
It's just kind of hard to believe that you would say that out loud. It kind of reminded me years ago, a friend who ran a wonderful think tank down in New Zealand. had the Prime Minister call him out by name and the organization out by name. And said through something the statement, public statement, and named my friend and his organization. It says something along the lines, like, Through tolerance, diversity, and inclusion, We just have to further marginalize people like him.
Yeah. And you're like, hey, hey! Did you just say that out loud? And I asked my friend, what did he do? And he said, I put it on my next fundraising letter, and it did really well.
But it was it's kind of like that. It's like we are a religion of peace and We know that because Because we all agree that we should. To me, I mean, it was even a little darker than that because it made me think of like an abusive relation. It's like a person saying, You're lucky I didn't hit you for that because we both know you deserved it, kind of thing.
Well, it completely is. And that actually, again, is the DNA of the critical theory mood, right? Which is. The moral evaluation is already done. You may not know, but we know.
This is what we're seeing in the WNBA. Like Sophie Cunningham says something along the lines of. Oh, hey, guys shouldn't participate in girls' sports. And there's never an argument, yes, they should, or not even a argument of why quote unquote trans women are women. It's just the statement that everyone should know and violating that is bigoted and hateful.
And so then it's just, you deserve this. Rod Dreer wrote about this years ago. He called it the law of merited possibility, where he's like, you know, this will never happen, but when it does, it'll be all your fault. And this is kind of an example of that that we saw in the debate.
Now, of course, the connection is, is you kind of see this, and every once in a while you see the The reality comes forward. I say every once in a while, we see it a lot more. And it I guess it it reminded me Also a little bit. of Well, let me put it this way. How does this connect to The election results.
in in Michigan. Probably not directly. I but I think often about The Clash of Civilizations, which is Huntington's thesis, Samuel Huntington's thesis. coming uh into out of the 90s prior to 9-11 while people were predicting the triumph of democracy. and that that would be have an inevitable run uh across countries.
now that the Cold War was over, and Huntington proposing something else that Basically, you can't see the world in terms of nation states. You have to see it in terms of civilization. Civilizations are built around ideals. Ideals are based in worldviews and religions. And the fault lines that we see active in the world.
are civilizational fault lines. civilizations that sometimes Exist within a country or exist across multiple countries. Basically, he was talking about. The impending as he saw a conflict between Islam and the rest of the world. And The the other part of that which people often miss And Diane West, when she wrote her book about adolescence and the triumph of adolescence, in the West.
And then had to rewrite it all after 9-11 and say, oh, the fact that we're all a bunch of, you know. Perpetual adolescence is bad enough. But we're a bunch of perpetual adolescents in a global clash with Islam. Like that means We're incapable of handling our business, so to speak.
So I think about Huntington and I think about his prediction that The clash between civilizations would become hotter. than anything we had seen before, that the biggest clash would be between Islam and the West. Or Islam in the rest, but mostly Islam in the West. And this is the part that we often forget: that Islam would win. That's what he also said.
And he said that because it wouldn't, you couldn't reduce it to military decisions. You had to basically. the ability to actually understand what was happening. And The ability then to respond with the level of maturity. and clarity, moral clarity.
And he just didn't believe that the West ha had it in us. And Huntington didn't get everything right. People critique his thesis all the time. People will write in and critique, say, Huntington got it wrong. I still think Honey Tay got an awful lot of it right.
He may not have gotten this piece right, but then you look at something. Like where the party is, and why, why is I say the Democratic Party specifically? We now have another democratic socialist. We now have another. person connecting radical Islam Or sorry, we have an We now have another person whose campaign connects an identity as a Muslim with democratic socialism.
And basically pushing the Overton window of what's normal within the Democratic Party. Bar to the ideological left. far to the ideological left. and even moving. Uh stalwarts.
like Bernie Sanders and others. of where they were. And that's the thing is that Al-Said in Michigan won. Against a pretty radical Democrat, you know, somebody that would have been solidly to the left. Pelosi or you know Bill Clinton, or the Democrats of the last generation.
I'm not trying here to be political. What I'm trying to say is. This tells you where this is.
Now that this has moved to the left ideologically to such an extreme degree. Yeah. Which is on its face irrational, right? There is almost no logical. Like sharing of grievances or any logical connection between.
An Islamic worldview and the American progressive left, other than the one uniting. thing being A general hatred. For the American way of life, like for, I don't know how else to say it, like for the for America. And they, you know, a lot, a lot of reporters have talked about this with this election victory in Michigan because this candidate has been friendly with Hassan Piker and people who are, you know, 10 years ago, Barack Obama had to write off Jeremiah Wright and claim to have nothing, you know, in common with him and to not believe what he was saying about America. And that's changed already.
I mean, I guess that's been more than 10 years, but. But to me, that's the plot twist here. Like it's not a clash of civilizations in that You know, the West is standing athwart this. Oncoming enemy, and it's who has the strongest. military or border will prevail.
It's that we're going to allow it. Because from like we're gonna let it happen because From from within too many people don't like America. Or they have the grievance impulse or the critical theory impulse or whatever that's going to pave the way for it. I think, yeah, I think. Two things.
One is I wouldn't want to reduce it just down, although I think it's true. I just don't think it's deep enough. To whether we like America or don't like America. I think that's a way of kind of doing kind of red meat patriotism, and of which I'm probably guilty. What we're talking here is the cut flower.
Framing, which is there are things that made America what it was. that made America self-correct, that made America point out things that it had gotten wrong and and get back on track. And those things are not. If those things are not valued, if those things are not. understood any more.
then you can't expect to have the fruit without Without the root. I also will say It'll be interesting to see where this goes.
Now, I think what it means for our At least this. Political party is the same thing that Trump has meant for the Republican Party, right? The center of the party has shifted and it has shifted on specific things in specific ways.
Now, we can argue in another, you know, time and place of what exactly Trump has done to the Republican Party and what's that look like to, you know, in comparison to what. has happened to the Democratic Party. But that would be to take this show into a place where we probably shouldn't because it gets into political stuff. My my point is, it's just that it's moved. I The question is, is he electable?
Because this is just a primary, right? He didn't win the seat. Is the primary? It does tell you something about where it is, and it does remind me of Huntington's idea. And to your point, we're letting this happen, right?
This is happening to us from the inside. You need to know, I say you, like everybody needs to know, not you personally, but we all what we all need to know. You need to know, Maria, what we all need to know, Maria. is the British historian Toynbee. His observation that Civilizations Are not murdered.
They commit suicide. Um th th this that that's the way it always happens. There are civilizations that get attacked from the outside, and that is their demise. But almost always, it's because they've already been significantly weakened from the inside. And most civilizations just wither and die.
They just die from the inside. And I think that were arrogant. If we think that We play by separate rules. We we play by the same rules. And that there are realities there that have to be respected and honored, or the consequences are there.
I'm not saying we're doomed tomorrow. You know, the death of the Roman Empire took hundreds of years and America is going to be around, I think, for a long time. I just think That these are realities of the way the world works. And, um, So we'll see. And, you know, we might come out of the next, out of November and go, oh, yeah, we were all scared for nothing.
Yeah. Well, time will tell.
Well, John, let's talk about some questions that we received from listeners this past week. I'm going to start with one, which is a response to a breakpoint commentary we did about Benjamin Rush. I'll read a little bit from this person's comment. I thought the breakpoint episode was interesting. It made me want to know more about Benjamin Rush.
But when I looked up more info about him, I found he actually owned a slave. I am disappointed this was left out of the breakpoint. It seems disingenuous to praise Mr. Rush's abolitionist work. and not address that he owned a slave.
So I'm gonna let you take this one, but what I will just say, again, having just gotten off of my, you know, little over a week of America 250 road trip with my kids and doing all the Founding Fathers things. We were in Boston and Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. We did a little bit too much, one might argue, but not if you're my husband. I will just say that, you know, it's been said many, many times before, but That era was so complicated. We have to assume a lot and we have to put a lot of our cultural blinders on.
If we look back at that time and believe that we know what we would have said or done, with a topic like this, it's almost impossible to even convince yourself of that. Like to imagine seeing another human being. Being treated as an enslaved person is so rightfully repugnant and abhorrent to us that. I can't stomach the thought that I wouldn't have been repulsed by it at the time. But I do just I bristle at this impulse that any person who had a connection to it, including.
Owning a slave in their own family, that in order to have any credibility to talk about anything else that they did, we've got to spend the requisite 10 minutes. Lamenting this, trying to explain it away, explaining that we know it was bad. And I know that's not what this listener was asking for, but. I was just struck again by that in a lot of the history that we learned anew over the last week: this was. Gosh, it was a really disgusting thing, but it was also more complex than I think we think it was a lot of the time.
Yeah, as far as this, there wasn't an intentional leaving this out. We were relying a lot on some sources, should have dug a little bit deeper on this. We we did not. I think that Even the work that I did to look at this issue over the last week, and I need to look at it a little bit more, there obviously is dramatic differences. Between how slaves were treated and particularly those.
He's not the only abolitionist or someone who worked to undermine slavery who owned slaves. There's that inconsistency that exists. In the founders, and you know, Jefferson's the most obvious example, but there are others as well. And there's also a difference between how they understood and thought about their slaves. I mean, Rush is making the case that.
Every human being is descended from Adam and Eve and made in the image of God. And so. I think there's more to be said in how he kind of thought about it. Why he did, why he chose to free the slave that he owned, and so on. I think also this, it points to how important it is to understand arguments and to understand ideas.
And to understand that the people who make those arguments and make those ideas do not make those arguments or ideas in and of themselves true. It is true. even if it's uttered by a slave owner, that humans are made in the image of God, that slavery is a despicable violation of human dignity, And that's the inconsistency that Russia's life exhibits.
So it doesn't change what's true. It also you think about the the the importance of Individuals Like Rush in the American story, and his story gets left out oftentimes. And it seems like he is an interesting person that we should maybe talk about. More.
So I think we can recognize that oftentimes we're going to be dealing historically. With flawed people, or to me, put it differently, we're always going to be dealing with people who are flawed because all people are flawed. In different ways. And that fact shouldn't have been left out of this. It was.
So we take responsibility. for that and uh I think he's a fascinating figure nonetheless, and his arguments were. Particularly powerful and potent in convincing other people. And so his life is consequential for that reason.
Well, let's go to another question here. This one was a response to a breakpoint about That Bible verse is not about immigration, referring to Matthew 25, in which Jesus says. I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
And then the righteous will answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you? And Jesus says, Truly, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me. And this person who wrote in said, I've heard some people arguing that this refers to how. Jesus will judge people based on how they've treated other Christians.
But even if Jesus wasn't talking about migration, I have been wondering if this verse might apply to migration today, and I would have appreciated if you could have explained. What do you think this verse was referring to?
Well, it's referring to believers that Jesus talks about my brothers, he's referring to. the call of Christians to take up the cause of other Christians. And I think you know, as we move into a a time in which, you know, people have paid a price of some kind. For their faith, that we have a responsibility to care. I've made this case, for example.
for people who Like Jack Phillips or Baron L. Stutzman, who face a relentless assault from the state. What are the churches doing? to come alongside them. And thankfully there's some good stories that it's happening or we think about, you know.
Uh Nigeria. I can't. I'm not in Nigeria. I can't directly go to Nigeria. I talk about Nigerian Christians.
and the plight of Nigerian Christians an awful lot. I appeal to our government authorities and encourage all of our listeners to do the same thing. Because they're an example, I think, of what this verse is applying to. I don't think we should, by the way. I don't think it's Christian to say, well, let's come up with the narrowest definition of who this verse applies to.
And then that gets us off the hook.
So I'm not advocating for that either because there is a posture. That is being encouraged in this.
So let me take, I think, what is a legitimate uh understanding and Uh apply it to uh of of this of this passage and apply it to the situation. Uh t t today. There there are plenty of other verses. uh throughout scripture Uh that justify the existence of nations and the rights Of nations to determine their borders and determine their laws, and to expect people to abide by it. including, by the way, Israel.
So that's also in there. There is, I think, now in an aggressive response. to a real governmental failure under the last administration and attempt To correct that, and it's been an over correction in many ways.
So I think any wise immigration policy should, first of all, make it straightforward for legal migration to take place. I think that a country like ours has a responsibility. to have. a refugee program to take care of people who are fleeing. Persecution and that sort of thing.
That doesn't necessarily mean they should come to us. There might be some place closer. There might be some culturally a better fit. there might be some financially more feasible solution.
So I think, though, that there is a level of responsibility that a place like America has. Uh to to at least have an option for those that should qualify within The framing that they see fit. I think that framing should be based on human dignity. I think then how we carry out those laws. How we carry out these policies needs to be wise.
It should not separate children from their families unless it puts Somehow it helps children who have been placed in danger by their families. That the whole situation on the southern border in particular for the last decade has been such a mess on that front, we don't even know. We don't know how many we've lost. We don't know where they've gone. And that is not a loving thing.
uh to never uh commit uh to to doing that. I think any wise immigration policy absolutely takes into account. Religion. and takes into account. culture.
because as we have already seen around the world, And we can see in the predictions of Samuel Huntington and others: religion matters. Culture matters because religion matters. And this is part of the overreach, I think, of the correctiveness under this particular administration that we've not made the distinction. between Muslims and Christians. And that's, by the way, an important distinction.
I often think of an apologist who said this: he goes, Would it make a difference if you were walking down? An alley late at night, and you see a group of guys coming your way that are big and burly. Maybe they have tattoos and boots and cut-off jean shirts. Would it make a difference if you knew they were coming from a Bible study? And the answer is yes, it would make a difference if you knew, because this stuff actually matters and it matters in real life and it should matter to our policies.
We have, for example, spoken out on a number of issues, a number of incidents. uh groups of of Christians that have been caught up in in some of this now Christians who break the law are not exempt because they're Christians. There's the law as the law, and we should do that. But the overreach into some legitimate refugee claims and so on. uh has been a problem as they're trying to correct something that has gone dramatically wrong.
Under previous administrations. To go back to something you mentioned earlier in the show, too, the law of subsidiarity plays in here, too. Because I've I've heard the President say, you know, that they're They look at it as their Mandate first is to protect the American people. And that's a legitimate thing for the government to do. Yeah.
Which is going to influence the rest of it. Like the situation on the ground here. Is gonna, it's just gonna be circumstance and time dependent. It's gonna change. It's completely valid to say, look.
That this that the thing is broken and it has to be done. And we're you know Yeah. That there's going to be mistakes in the process. Like, you know, I don't think. conservatives even that have a a real concern with how the immigration situation has gone over the last decade.
There's no reason we can't turn around and say, oh, we're probably not going to get it all right, and there's going to be some incidents that need to be corrected. And that doesn't mean we're manufacturing incidents like we've seen sometimes happen in media coverage.
So, look, I think it's a mistake to go back and answer this question. We've covered a lot of ground here in a short amount of time, and a lot of this stuff needs further clarification. But let me just say a couple of things. Number one is Matthew 25. There are principles that flow out of this that should shape how Christians think about their role in this.
This is not a verse about the state. It's not a verse about the government. There are other things about the state and the government and scripture that can inform us. And then there are other things too that should inform not only what we do, but how we then do it. And uh I think that that There's no worries for a culture like ours.
Um that's basically celebrated and advanced Judeo-Christian Principles to say You know, if you're going to be here, we want you to be in line with these Judeo-Christian principles. And if you're not, then you shouldn't be here. There's nothing I I don't think You know, particularly weird about saying something like that. It is now, right? It'll get you branded a Christian nationalist pretty quick, but I think it makes.
An awful lot of sense.
So let's build our policy on more than just Matthew 25, verses 35 to to 40, but let's also let it say that that's something That's a passage that's used to, you know. talk about charity and talk about feeding the homeless and talk about everything else. And Really, Jesus here is talking about his disciples who are attacked for being disciples. But that doesn't mean we don't have to define it down narrowly to say, obviously, Jesus doesn't want us to be mean. Jesus doesn't want us to be cruel.
Jesus wants us to care for people who are in need of it. And by you, he doesn't mean the state on your behalf, he means you. And so all these things can be true at the same time.
Well, as a reminder, if you want to send in a question or a comment, you can go to breakpoint.org and click on contact us, and we would love to hear from you. But thank you to those of you who sent them in. And we appreciate the chance to get to respond. That's going to do it for the show this week. Thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint This Week.
From the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street. Wishing you a great week. We'll see you all back here next time. God bless.
Okay.
