Breakpoint

Breakpoint A daily look at an ever changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. with a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends.
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Since 1991, Breakpoint—a program of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview—has provided believers around the U.S. Our daily Breakpoint commentaries, co-hosted by Colson Center President John Stonestreet, air on some 1,400 radio outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Its "Breakpoint This Week" counterpart, also hosted by Stonestreet and Shane Morris in

cludes a weekly conversation with leading Christian writers and thinkers on topics ranging from the sanctity of life to marriage, religious liberty, and the restoration of virtue and ethics to public life. Over at Breakpoint.org, Stonestreet is joined by other thoughtful Christian writers through columns and feature articles equipping believers to live and defend the Christian worldview. Check us out online for great worldview content and resources, including book reviews for teens and preteens, need-to-know news headlines and more.

The Legacy of John Witherspoon Sunday marks the anniversary of the inauguration of John Witherspoon as president of the ...
15/08/2025

The Legacy of John Witherspoon

Sunday marks the anniversary of the inauguration of John Witherspoon as president of the College of New Jersey, known today as Princeton University. Among the most important and perhaps the most underrated of the American founding fathers, Witherspoon was born in Scotland in 1723. He received a Master of Arts at age 16 from the University of Edinburgh, where he would continue studies in divinity. In 1745, he became an evangelical minister in the Church of Scotland.

In 1746, Witherspoon was briefly imprisoned for opposing the royalist Jacobite uprising. Though that experience damaged his health for life, it did not slow him down. Upon his release, he returned to pastoral ministry and became a popular preacher, sought-after speaker, and author. In 1764, the University of St. Andrews awarded Witherspoon an honorary Doctor of Divinity. Four years later, he accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey.

Though the school’s primary mission at the time was to train Presbyterian ministers, Witherspoon found that the students received poor teaching and had an inadequate library. Through fundraising, reorganization, higher standards, and new resources—including hundreds of books donated from his personal library—Witherspoon transformed the college into a top-tier school.

In addition to his leadership at a crucial time in the university’s history, Witherspoon taught courses in rhetoric, history, divinity, and moral philosophy. His ideas were anchored in Reformed theology and the natural law tradition. He was also heavily influenced by Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid and his Common Sense Realism. These ideas became deeply rooted across Princeton and American society, and Witherspoon’s teaching laid essential groundwork for both the American Revolution and the government that followed.

Leaning heavily on the Calvinistic tradition, Witherspoon promoted the rights of people to challenge governmental overreach, even by force of arms if necessary. He strongly supported the American Revolution, with growing concern over the centralization of government and the Crown assuming responsibilities that were historically the prerogatives of the colonies. The final straw for Witherspoon was when bishops were appointed from England to oversee religious life in the colonies.

Like his Presbyterian forebearers in Scotland, Witherspoon saw these violations as justification for revolt. He served in the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1784, taking on a prodigious amount of work and serving on over 100 committees. His energy and passion caused John Adams to refer to Witherspoon as “an animated son of Liberty.” After the war, he helped draft the Articles of Confederation and later shepherded the Constitution through the New Jersey state legislature.

Even with that impressive resume, Witherspoon’s most important legacy are his students from the College of New Jersey. Witherspoon taught James Madison the necessity of checks and balances in government. His other students include Aaron Burr, 37 judges—including several members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and three U.S. Supreme Court justices, 10 cabinet officers, 12 members of the Continental Congress, 28 U.S. Senators, and 49 U.S. Congressmen.

Witherspoon was arguably the single most influential founder who shaped the early years of the Republic. Today, he is mostly remembered for owning two slaves. Like many of the founders, his attitude toward slavery was complex and contradictory. He taught that slaves and employees should be treated with dignity and respect, and he even spoke out against the institution of slavery at the college.

However, he opposed a measure by the state legislature that would have banned slavery in New Jersey. Like many others, Witherspoon believed slavery would die out within a generation, and therefore the legislation was unnecessary and might interfere with the process he believed was inevitable.

Witherspoon’s failure to extend his convictions about liberty to the slaves in his midst was a moral tragedy. However, that does not change the honor due his incredible contributions to the founding of the United States. He advanced the ideas that secured American liberty and flourishing.

14/08/2025

Should Christians use AI?

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Interviewing the Dead through AI Last week, former CNN reporter Jim Acosta aired an interview with an avatar that claime...
14/08/2025

Interviewing the Dead through AI

Last week, former CNN reporter Jim Acosta aired an interview with an avatar that claimed to be Joaquin Oliver, one of the students killed in the horrific 2018 Parkland (FL) school shooting. Joaquin’s father used AI to create an interactive model of his late son and asked Acosta to "interview” it on what would have been his twenty-fifth birthday.

After the avatar said he was “all ears,” Acosta introduced himself and asked “Joaquin” what had happened to him. The avatar replied:

"I appreciate your curiosity. I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school. It’s important to talk about these issues so we can create a safer future for everyone."

When asked what should be done about gun violence, the avatar replied:

“Great question. I believe in a mix of stronger gun control laws, mental health support, and community engagement. We need to create safe spaces for conversations and connections, making sure everyone feels seen and heard. . . It’s about building a culture of kindness and understanding. What do you think about that?”

“I think that’s a great idea, Joaquin,” Acosta responded.

The interview was creepy, to say the least. Except for an initial greeting, AI “Joaquin” spoke in a flat voice and with eyes that appeared lifeless. And, of course, it is impossible to know what views Joaquin would hold had he survived.

Most unsettling was how Acosta promoted the interview as if he actually spoke to the dead student, rather than a computer program that was fed a specific point of view. Apparently, the boy’s parents hope that the avatar will soon participate in debates about gun violence. The obvious expectation is that everyone should accept the assumption that an AI program has brought a dead student back to life. This goes far beyond the hologram created of Walt Disney or even the companies that bring photos to life, Harry Potter style.

In the 1960’s, historian Daniel Boorstin worried that people would confuse television and movies with the real world. “We risk being the first people in history,” he said, “to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them.” His point is as much about the kind of people we are as it is about how impressive we can make our illusions. After all, we are people who have already confused ‘likes’ with being liked, social media ‘friends’ with real ones, and platforms with success.

Though in Deuteronomy, God strictly forbid the Israelites from inquiring after the dead, our collective faith in technology has convinced us such things are far less dangerous. Twentieth century writer Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Our science fiction, as well as tech-gurus such as Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil, promise a day when we will inherit eternal life by uploading our consciousness to computers. At that point, it will be fully impossible to know where our technology begins and our humanity ends.

This brave new world will be built on the assumption that human beings are the sum of their parts, reducible to information stored in bio-mechanical databases that can be transferred to other memory banks. It’s the same assumption undergirding the notion that an AI avatar should be taken as if it is the person it is pretending to be. It is not.

I Samuel 28 records when King Saul of Israel sought a witch to summon the prophet Samuel. He did this because God would not answer his inquiry about whether to go to war. Samuel informed the king that not only would he lose the next day’s battle, but that he and his sons would be killed.

Acosta’s interview wasn’t exactly necromancy, but the impulse is the same. Both presume that, whether in our sorcery or our technology, we can hold the keys of death. We do not. As Jesus told John: “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”

Because only humans bear the image of God, AI will never be human. Because only Christ defeated the grave, only He holds the keys of life and death. In this brave new world, let God be God. Let humans be human. Let machines be machines.

Doctrine Divides... as it should Elizabeth Eaton, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, recently announc...
13/08/2025

Doctrine Divides... as it should

Elizabeth Eaton, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, recently announced that the denomination is dropping the filioque from its liturgy. According to Eaton, the change is part of a 40-year-long quest for better relations with various Eastern Orthodox groups. She called the move a “significant breakthrough” toward “reconciliation” and “healing age-old divisions,” and she rejoiced that the “filioque is no longer church dividing.”

What Bishop Eaton did not argue is that the change was doctrinally necessary, or that the new position brings the denomination closer to biblical truth. Instead, she appealed to “unity in the body of Christ,” something the ELCA has been willing to violate over many other concerns, especially homosexuality. As pastor and creator of Lutheran satire Hans Fiene wrote on X:

"Things the ELCA will give up to heal divisions with the Orthodox: the filioque. Things the ELCA will not give up to heal divisions with the [O]rthodox: sin."

The word filioque is Latin for “and the Son,” as in, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” This is from the Nicene Creed, a widely accepted summary of Christian doctrine, which emerged from the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 and was finalized at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381. The original text read only “who proceeds from the Father.” However, over subsequent generations, Christians in Western Europe included “... and the Son.” Eastern Christians did not.

Those three words in English, (and just one in Latin) carry enormous theological weight. Though other issues were at play, this was the final straw that led the Pope in Rome and the Patriarch in Constantinople to mutual excommunicate each other in 1054. For Western Christians, at issue is preserving the unity of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, who always works in the Name of Christ. For Eastern Christians, it’s a question of authority. For both, at stake is how best to understand the inner workings of the Godhead. Though certainly an issue of theological precision, the filioque is a matter of no small theological importance.
. .except, apparently, for the ELCA. For Bishop Eaton, what Lutherans should believe about the Holy Spirit is not as important as maintaining unity. On the other hand, for the ELCA, maintaining unity is not as important as embracing brand new categories of sexual morality and identity which violate the historic moral teaching of the church and Holy Scripture.

“Doctrine divides” is a phrase often repeated to argue that Christians would be better Christians if they focused on “loving people” instead of theology. Of course, any specifics about how to love people immediately puts us back into the realm of doctrine. For example, if “love” means to affirm things that Jesus clearly considered to be sin, we must adopt wholly different understandings of sin, salvation, Christology, and anthropology. In the process, questions of transcendent truth are made subservient to more immediate concerns, such as being affirming and inclusive.

Christianity drained of doctrine is not Christianity at all. The Bible is very concerned that our hearts and minds align with God. It matters if we call Him by the right name, worship Him in the right way, and think with proper understandings of His nature and will. It matters whether Jesus was killed as a social revolutionary willing to challenge the empire or because it was ordained by God before the foundation of the world as the means of atoning for the sins of the world. After all, Christians were not targeted by Roman emperors, Islamic jihadists, and Communist states because they cared for the poor. They were targeted because of theological convictions about who was God and who was not. Similarly, Jack Phillips was not targeted, first by the state of Colorado and then by a trans-identifying lawyer, because he refused to bake cakes for Halloween. He was targeted for his theological convictions about sin and same-sex marriage.

In other words, doctrine does divide. In fact, it should divide. Without it, we cannot clarify right from wrong, good from bad, and truth from falsehood. We should always, as the Apostle Paul wrote, speak the truth in love, but we cannot abandon one for the sake of the other. If what is true about God matters to God, it should also matter to us.

12/08/2025

How should Christians think about this American Eagle ad?

Listen to the full show by searching "Breakpoint" wherever you listen to podcasts.

Losing our Music According to a recent article in The Atlantic, there’s a new hit band that doesn’t really exist. Velvet...
12/08/2025

Losing our Music

According to a recent article in The Atlantic, there’s a new hit band that doesn’t really exist. Velvet Sundown got one million hits on Spotify before the wider public realized they were completely AI-generated. Manufactured musical acts are nothing new, but at least boy bands and The Monkees were made up of dancing, singing living humans.

Velvet Sundown’s two albums have a coffee house vibe. Band photos, history, and song lyrics can all be found online for this group that doesn’t exist. Apparently, they also have a social media strategy. When my colleague Tim Padgett shared the Atlantic article online, the band “liked” his post. One of their own social media posts reads, “They said we’re not real. Maybe you aren’t either.”
Could there be a better encapsulation of our moment than this? Disembodied art. Music without a musician. Will anyone care as long as they like it?

The 1999 film “The Matrix” is a dystopian tale of an ordinary man who discovers his entire world is an illusion manufactured by artificially intelligent robots. Part of the story is that humans are easily captive because of their addiction to ease and escape.
In 2021, the star of the Matrix films Keanu Reeves had dinner with some friends whose teenage daughters had not seen the film. When he explained the plot, the girls were puzzled. Why would anyone want to leave the illusion? One of them even said, “Who cares if it’s real?” Reeves reply was, “That’s awesome!”

No, it’s terrifying. For a generation or more, art, music, and entertainment has been all about the individual experience. There’s no right way to listen, view, or understand. In fact, there’s not really anything to understand since meaning is a matter only of interpretation. In this culture-wide application of the “reader response” theory about literature, it doesn’t matter what the artist intends or how anyone else understands it. It doesn’t even matter if what the artist creates is good. Now, in the case of Velvet Sundown, it doesn’t matter if there’s an artist at all.

On one hand, innocuous AI-generated music playing in the background of a road trip or the kitchen may not mean all that much, if we were a different kind of culture. But we aren’t. We’re a culture detached from truth and a moral vision for our imaginations. We’ve detached identity and purpose from who we truly are, made in the image of God to reflect our Creator and Source of all truth. Beauty has, in large part, fully succumbed to mindless sensation. Crassness has become a substitute for excellence.

It’s certainly notable that music has played such a prominent role in the history of the people of God. Whole sections of God’s revelation to His people come in the form of song, from the Psalms to large sections of the prophets. The songs of Moses, Deborah, Hannah, and Mary all punctuate the redemptive work of God. Throughout every expression of the Church, Christian worship has been characterized by song.

Because God created humans to worship, music is inescapably a form of worship, for better or worse. Ultimately, real people should be creating music because people were created to worship with music. As the psalmist sang, “My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have redeemed.”

A Voice in the English Wilderness On July 18, British Conservative Party Member Danny Kruger, gave a beautiful and passi...
11/08/2025

A Voice in the English Wilderness

On July 18, British Conservative Party Member Danny Kruger, gave a beautiful and passionate speech before British Parliament. He called on England’s leaders to remember where they’d come from, and he warned what lies ahead if they don’t. Britain’s glory, he argued, is rooted in the riches of Christianity. Abandoning that heritage is why the nation is now struggling.

It’s fitting that Kruger spoke to a mostly empty room. Though the speech has since gone viral, few other MPs bothered to show up for it. It’s difficult to imagine a better analogy for our cultural moment than a faithful voice warning against looming dangers, yet widely ignored.

Kruger's speech should be listened to in its entirety. After sharing the long history of Christianity in England, which dates back over 1000 years to when the nation first emerged from pagan Germanic tribes, he noted the unique bond between the Church of England and the nation. The very room where he spoke was, in fact, a chapel, and the government plays a role in leading the church.

Americans differ on the idea of a state church, with good reason. And yet, we ought to share Kruger's concern about losing our religion. Christianity made the modern world. As historian Tom Holland has noted, our ideas about justice, love, mercy, and human rights did not come from idol worshipers. These ideas came first from the ancient Hebrews and were handed to the Early Church. They result from the long meditation on Christianity’s divine truths.

From the British context, those truths gave the world incredible cultural treasures, from the writings of Shakespeare, Milton, and Austen to the science of Newton and Faraday. From this fertile soil came Wilberforce, who liberated slaves, and Churchill, who saved the world from tyranny. All of these minds grew in a world shaped by Christian truths.

It is these very truths that are now under threat across the West, especially in Britain. Instead, Kruger pointed out, Islam is taking root in many British cities, and far-Left ideologues oppose the very ideals that built the world from which they benefit. However, it is becoming more obvious that getting rid of Christianity will not bring about a secular utopia. As Kreuger put it:

"[T]o repudiate Christianity is not only to sever ourselves from our past, but to cut off the source of all the things we value now and that we need in the future, such as freedom, tolerance, individual dignity and human rights.

A new restoration is needed now, with a revival of the faith, a recovery of a Christian politics and a re-founding of this nation on the teachings that [King] Alfred made the basis of the common law of England all those centuries ago.

This is a mission for the Church under its next leader, whoever that is; it is a mission for this place—the old chapel that became the wellspring of western democracy—and for us, its Members; and it is a mission for our whole country. It is the route to a prosperous modernity founded on respect for human dignity, responsibility for the created world and the worship of God."

Here, Kruger is pointing to the heart of Truth Rising, a new project of the Colson Center and Focus on the Family. The new documentary exposes that we are living in a “civilizational moment” where so much is at stake. Co-hosted by Os Guinness and myself, Truth Rising combines the insights of experts about this moment with stories of courage, and it teaches that those who are committed to truth in this moment can make an extraordinary impact. Even as the world redefines truth, Truth Rising calls people to clarity and courage, while trusting God with our obedience.

Scripture tells us that there’s nothing new under the sun. Times have been bad before, and things can be renewed again. The same truths and power that God used to bring blessing to the world is available to His people today.

Go to TruthRising.com/colson for more information about Truth Rising.

Is Snark a Spiritual Gift? I often joke that I have the spiritual gift of sarcasm. A Florida teacher, years ago, did not...
08/08/2025

Is Snark a Spiritual Gift?

I often joke that I have the spiritual gift of sarcasm. A Florida teacher, years ago, did not find that funny at all. “Sarcasm is NOT a spiritual gift,” she wrote to me. I read her comment and thought to myself, “well, no duh.”

Not only does that story point clearly to my sin nature, it reflects the struggle for Christians in this cultural moment. George Orwell famously said, “In an age of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” For Christians who understand that this time and place is determined by God, and therefore the moment to which they’ve been called, truth telling is non-negotiable. In other words, it is every Christian’s calling be truth tellers in a moment that has abandoned the very idea of truth.

The struggle is how to do this. Father Robert Sirico, co-founder of the Acton Institute, offered this as a guide: “We must be ruthless with ideas but gentle with people.” Helpful, but the struggle is in the trying, especially when so many identify with the ideas they hold. Some of these ideas are especially damnable, and also reinforced by those in position of influence, even political power.

Still, Scripture is clear. Truth is to be spoken in love. At the recent Great Lakes Symposium, entitled, “Truth, Love and Humor,” Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family talked about what that means:

"I believe in the fruit of the Spirit. I believe in the love of God. And so often I'll ask the audience, ‘Who came to Christ this way: Those Christians were so mean to me. They treated me so poorly. I decided to become one of them.’ Does anybody have that testimony? No. That’s why the love of God is so important because we have to allow the Holy Spirit to use the way we engage people to crack their hearts open.

Let's look at 2 Timothy 2:24-26. I love this scripture, and it's kind of the scripture I meditate on before I go into a battle like that. It says, ‘And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone . . .’ Not kind to most people—to everyone; able to teach patiently, enduring evil, and correcting opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, ‘. . . and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.’

Isn't that awesome? This is our job description everybody."

Joining Daly and myself on stage was Seth Dillon, CEO of the Christian satire site Babylon Bee, whose tagline is “Fake News You Can Trust.” The Bee targets bad ideas both inside and outside of the church with humor, often biting humor. I asked him whether that approach conflicts with the biblical command to speak the truth in love. Dillon responded this way:

"I think that it's a misinterpretation of the purpose of what we're doing with satire to suggest that what we’re doing isn’t gentle or respectful or loving. It’s speaking the truth in love and using humor to do it. And I think that’s necessary. I think it’s very necessary because—this is back to that Chesterton quote I said before—humor can get in under the door. It’s one of the most effective ways to push back on these bad ideas. So, if we don’t use that, and we don't recognize the biblical precedent for that, you know, Elijah engaged in mockery, he used that to great effect. So, there are examples in the Bible of hyperbolic language. You know, Jesus used a lot of hyperbolic language in his rebukes. I think it can be extremely forceful and effective. And again, the purpose of it is not to put people down and make them feel bad about themselves. It's not about bullying."

In fact, the Bee has been forceful and effective. Their story is featured in the upcoming documentary Truth Rising. Like many others within the last several years, the Bee was pressured to accommodate the terrible idea that a male can be a woman. However, they refused and, as a result, were banned from Twitter. In the end, God used their decision as an important impetus for the cultural pushback against transgender ideology.

Certainly, the line between sharp wit and cruelty is thin, especially for fallen people. A surgeon can harm or heal, and our sinful nature makes the former as likely as the latter. However, the call to love should not be confused with nice. That confusion is common and has led many to capitulate to ideas that victimize people.

As Paul told Timothy, the goal of Christian truth-telling should be to free the victims of bad ideas. To do so is an act of love. It won’t always be seen that way, but we should do it anyway, even if we are perceived as being “not nice.”

To listen to the entire conversation on “Truth, Love, and Humor,” catch this week’s bonus episode of the Breakpoint podcast. And don’t miss the global streaming premier of “Truth Rising,” Friday September 5. Visit truthrising.com/colson.

BONUS: Contending for TruthIn this bonus episode of Breakpoint, John Stonestreet has a conversation with Gabe Lyons, And...
07/08/2025

BONUS: Contending for Truth

In this bonus episode of Breakpoint, John Stonestreet has a conversation with Gabe Lyons, Andrew Walker, and Ryan Anderson. They discuss what can we learn by looking back over the last several decades of the church's involvement in culture and what it means to embrace and lose our public morality.

The British CrisisThe Christian’s citizenship is in heaven, but that doesn’t mean that our cultures and civilizations do...
07/08/2025

The British Crisis

The Christian’s citizenship is in heaven, but that doesn’t mean that our cultures and civilizations don’t matter. Rather, Christians are to bring Christ’s kingdom to bear in the times and places where God has placed them, working to renew and restore, turning our upside-down world right-side up. Christians are also right to mourn nations that reject their Christian heritage, especially when they devolve into something unrecognizable.

In the new film, Truth Rising, an impressive collection of British intellectuals describe how this has happened within their own nation and what this predicts for the Western world. Baroness Philippa Stroud, a founder of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, Sir Niall Ferguson, perhaps the foremost expert in the world on the history of civilizations, Winston Marshal, formerly of Mumford and Sons, and Konstantin Kisin, best-selling author and political commentator, are among the many voices that describe our fraught cultural moment. Check out Truth Rising when it premiers September 5. Learn more at truthrising.com/colson.

In the years after World War II, immigrants from former colonies generally integrated into the countries that had colonized them. However, in recent decades, many European nations adopted a careless border policy while at the same time rejecting their own heritage. As a result, mass migration from the Middle East and Africa—or in Britain’s case, South Asia—occurred without sufficient vetting or expectation of assimilation. Particularly migrants from Muslim countries tend to despise western values and the people who hold them. Often, they are explicit about their desire to transform their new countries into fundamentalist Islamic states.

The contempt for kafir, or non-Muslims, can be seen in the “grooming gangs” in England. Since the early 2000’s, Hundreds of thousands of British girls have been r***d, trafficked and abused, some as young as 11. Often, the victims are taken from care homes and lower income communities. Countless have been murdered or were victims of drug overdoses administered by their abusers.

According to the 2023 UK Strategy for Countering Terrorism, 75% of MI5’s caseload involved monitoring Islamist threats, while 80% of counter terrorism suspect investigations were classified as Islamist. And yet, until last month, the Labour government in Britain shut down attempts to investigate or deal with the problem of grooming gangs. Police often ignored reports of the abuse out of fear of being labeled racist. Fathers attempting to rescue their daughters were arrested, and trafficked girls were labeled child prostitutes in order to shift blame upon them. For over two decades, the UK was more interested in protecting the reputation of the immigrant community than protecting English girls who were being abused.

Meanwhile, King Charles, who is officially the head of the Church of England, participated in very public celebrations of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, while making no statement about Lent and only generic statements about Easter.

Historically, Britain has championed civil rights, including free speech. Not anymore. In 2023, over 12,000 people were charged for their social media posts. Many involved comments that were deemed too anti-immigrant or too pro-British. Public perception is that native Brits and Christians are policed far more harshly than migrants and Muslims.

British elites long ago succumbed to the progressive take-down of national identity. Thus, there is little interest in protecting or preserving western civilization. Since western civilization is a product of Christianity, that must be rejected as well. Rejecting Christianity will mean losing those cultural goods that depend on Christian values, such as freedom of speech and religion, civil equality, universal human rights, and a host of other things the West has long taken for granted. The cultural goods of the Western world cannot be preserved if cut off from their roots. Currently, Britain is a case in point, and much of the rest of the West is not far behind.

Whether or not the West can be saved is not clear, either from history or from Scripture. God can certainly change the trajectories of nations and civilizations, but He has not revealed what His plans are for our specific time and place. Either way, whether in times of prosperity or persecution, Christians are called to be agents of renewal.

Thus, we pray out of love of neighbor and for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. We promote and preserve those things that are good. We oppose and resist what is evil. We imagine and innovate what we might offer the world in Christ’s name, and we renew and restore what is broken. As we do, perhaps the western tradition may be saved. Maybe not. As T.S. Eliot said, “For us there’s only the trying. The rest is none of our business.”

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The truth is a powerful thing.

We live in a moment of cultural confusion. Fewer and fewer of the things that give meaning to our lives come easily. Family, community, beauty, truth seem to be constantly eroding around us—while our news feeds are full of despair, anger, and division.

How are Christians to make sense of the world around us? How can we make sure we have clarity in our daily lives?

Welcome to BreakPoint. A program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, our commentaries offer incisive content people can’t find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion.