You're listening to Breakpoint This Week, where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian worldview. Today we're going to talk about a slew of recent Supreme Court decisions and what they mean. We're also gonna talk about the July 4th holiday. What kind of country are we now 249 years later? We have a lot to get to you this week.
We're so glad you're with us. Please stick around. 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. John, I think it was right after we recorded last week that we got news of the Supreme Court's decision.
in Mahmood versus Taylor.
So, I want to talk about that, but I also just want to hit a couple of major Supreme Court decisions that have come out in the past week. It is that time of year.
So let's start with Mahmoud versus Taylor. This was the case out of Maryland where the public school district. Had for Pride Week started reading these LGBT books to elementary schoolers, assuming all the way through high school, as part of the curriculum. And at first, when they implemented this policy, they allowed an opt-out for parents, and then they rescinded the opt-out policy. A impressively diverse group of parents, including a Muslim family, a Ukrainian Orthodox family, and a Christian family, I believe, sued.
And the court really smacked down the school in this decision. It was an impressive group of parents. And, you know, look, on its face, it has to do with a specific issue, right? Which is that kind of sex education, which, by the way, I was speaking with. Nick Eicher, who runs the World and Everything Init podcast.
I do a weekly segment on that called Culture Friday. And we were talking a little bit offline on that, and he asked if I had actually read the guidance from the school. a district about what's going to happen in these classes. It's bad. I mean, you know, look, if you think that This stuff is not really happening to your kids.
You're just not paying attention.
Now, is it the same everywhere? No. But this was basically feeding into really young kids things that they don't need to be thinking about. Not to mention In a confusing way.
So it's not only things they shouldn't be talking about at that age, but it's helping them think wrongly about it almost immediately.
So you really don't hate sex ed. In American public schools, enough. None of us do. It's just that bad. It's terrible.
But what's significant, I think, about this is that there really is a culture-wide on a number of fronts, none more than in the areas. of LGBTQ infiltration of our society. There is a battle between who owns the kids. Do kids belong to parents or do kids belong to government officials? Who knows best?
Do parents know best? Or do government officials know best? This is a large worldview framing. around one of the issues that emerges from a doctrine of creation.
So, how did God create the world? How did God create his image bearers? How did God create the nature of those relationships? And there are alternatives that have been proposed throughout history. And one of the most dangerous is that.
Kids don't really belong to parents. And so having a pushback on that. is really welcome. I was really disappointed this week because in my home state, there was a provision in our state budget. That would have forced the public libraries to put sexually explicit material, including books with these themes.
Into a separate part of the library. And unfortunately, our governor, for an unknown reason, vetoed that part of the budget. And I went on your favorite website, nextdoor.com. And it was whatever you're picturing, it was like that. I mean, but because it was this debate kind of playing out in real time.
But I've had the experience where I've let my nine-year-old go into the library and choose books she wants to look at. And I'm telling you, like one out of two times she'll come home whenever she picks the book she wants to look at, she has to come home and give them to me and then I decide if she can look at them. One out of every two times there's a book in there that she thought was A book that is geared towards her age that has some kind of LGBTQ theme. And the people the people arguing for the school board in this case in Maryland and the people at the library here who were so upset about this will say this is just exposing them to different ideas. It's not telling them they have to believe this.
And that is one of the, I'm sorry, it is one of the dumbest arguments. And I'm so grateful that the justices. tackle this in their decision saying this is not exposure. This is I forget what coercive normativeness, or however Justice Barrett or one of the justices put it in their decision. When you write these books as if not just like, hey, did you know that some people do this?
It's this is good. You should like it. We all like it. The wrong people don't like it. And, you know, it's really a problem if you don't think this is good.
That's clearly the message here. Clearly the message. And it's, you know, we could say Truman, Truman. It's all in Carl Truman. Because the framing of what it means to be human along these lines, even of this kind of Vision of untethered freedom, you know, self-determination.
You know, we're not telling them what to determine, but we're just giving them what it means to be self-determined. And also, if that means hiding it from you as the parents, that is indoctrination to a degree of one of the most pernicious and Dangerous ideas of the, you know, well, there's a whole history to this idea, but it's a terrible one. Let's just put it that way. And the libraries are bad enough. And there's no question about that.
There's a part of the story about, you know, how many books that are aimed for children and teens, the percentage of books. That are now written that are oriented around LGBTQ stuff. It's in direct disproportion to. kind of the uh the the the scale of the population or anything like that. But but but at the same time too.
There is a level of coercion that comes into play. When you're talking about teachers, when you're talking about required courses, when you're talking about This was, you can't opt your own kids out of this. There's not a single other thing that this applies to. And this goes to something we talked about in the past where. Kind of in terms of the sexual revolution and the kind of fruits of the sexual revolution, there's this whole other set of rules, you know, a different set of rules.
That these things play by. And it would be unthinkable, for example. Let's take your example of the library. As you're walking to the library, right? If some guy jumps out and exposes himself, you know, to you, God forbid, or to your daughter, you can have that man arrested and he would be charged with all kinds of endangered men and things like that.
That's precisely what these books are doing. And no one's being charged. Thankfully, we also had a Supreme Court decision. This has been a really consequential term of the Supreme Court, by the way. It tells you.
A couple things. Number one is the the level Of issues that our culture is wrestling with right now. When you have these sorts of questions being answered by the Supreme Court, Everything from, you know, again, once again, degrees of executive power to. you know, parental rights and so on. But that age verification laws on pornography websites can stand, that's significant.
Brad Littlejohn's been writing on that. He has a piece over at World Opinions and a piece in First Things, both of which are worth reading. That's the same thing, right? Because This is predatory pornography. It's always been predatory pornography.
You know, it was probably now 20 years ago. I was giving a talk at a homeschool conference to a group of parents about how to Kind of the philosophical framing of sexuality and how to talk about this with your kids. It was less how to have the talk and all the things you need to know, culturally speaking, to contextualize the talk in this day and age. And this mom came up to me and she said, hey, I'm here because my eight-year-old. asked me this week, mom, what's a pervert?
And I said, where did you see that word? And She said, Well, my son said that he was on the computer and there was a pop-up. And I didn't know whether that's a vocabulary word or something I needed to know.
So I clicked on it and. That was 20 years ago, probably when that conversation happened. That's the the degree at which the cat has been out of the bag. Really, really significant here for the Supreme Court, and just again, we're trying to put some genies back in the bottles. It's b it's it's going to be hard, but it is nice to at least not let any more out of the bottle, I guess.
Yeah. And to send a signal.
So you're talking about Supreme Court or the Free Speech Coalition is what they call themselves versus Paxton in Texas. Which upheld the rights of states to require age verification on these pornographic websites. But I've been thinking about this just in Pride Month and things happening in my neighborhood. I live in a very progressive neighborhood in Columbus. That just about this happens obviously across culture, but there is something uniquely.
aggressively sexual about gay culture. Which really makes logical sense when you think of it. I mean, this is a movement predicated on sexual activity. That's really the crux of the movement.
So that makes sense. But I've been feeling more and more frustrated as my kids are growing up and I'm looking at the world through their eyes. By how overt this is. And at the same time, how strong the gaslighting is. Like, I, you know, I was, I was talking to you about this offline a couple of weeks ago.
I was watching this, some show, and there's it's about four couples in their middle age, and they're just kind of grappling with getting older. And one of the couples is a gay couple. And the messaging is very clearly what it always is in the media, in these kinds of shows, anyway, which is this is a couple just like any other couple. But when you really drill down into the way this community lives and moves in the world, it is always aggressively sexual. The pride parades are, I mean, we've gotten over and over that.
And even I've been looking back through. Stories of, I think Thaddeus Williams wrote a piece in World Opinions about the true history of Harvey Milk. Who's like a gay mascot icon who just brutally abused young boys? And story after story, Katie Faust has exposed these stories of gay couples adopting children and then abusing them, being found to have abused them. And there's something.
you know, really grotesque and overtly Sexual more so in that community than the wider community. Don't you think that's true? It has changed. And I think, you know, what we're going to hear, and I know we're going to hear because later on we're going to respond to someone who commented on some of these things from our coverage of the Obergefell anniversary. But we're going to hear that well, heterosexual couples do that too.
The answer is yes, they do. You have to look at percentages and you have to look at other things that I think make. more sense of of the data. But the overt sexuality is absolutely part of it. And let me say this real quick, just to, I want to make sure what I said was clear, because I'm not saying that.
that community is more sinful than any other community or anything like that. But when it comes to, for example, these materials in the library and in schools, it goes to explaining why there is such a motivation to get sexual images in front of children. You don't see the heterosexual community, if you want to call it that. That I agree with 100%. And that's why I've always thought the word grooming is appropriate.
Now, I will say it's changed. We were asked a couple weeks ago after we talked about some of these things about why didn't we talk about After the Ball, which is a book that outlined a Gay strategy.
Now, there's mixed reviews about how influential that book is, but if you actually look at what that book says, It's pretty remarkable how At least prophetic it was. if not instructive. For the movement. The early days of the Pride or the LGBTQ movement had to address the hypersexuality that was overt. in like parades and because it had to do mostly with older men behaving in particular ways that was just considered obscene and pornographic and so on and so on.
Part of the strategy in the book After the Ball emerged from a meeting of gay activists, and there wasn't a lot of unity in that community. Early on, there was a lot of differentiation, fighting for money, you know, things like that. And what happened was, is they settled on a Set of strategies. And one of them was: we got to tone this down. We got to tone this down pretty, pretty big time.
Because we're not going to be able to get on T V. Secondly, we have to portray gay and gayness as much as possible. And that seems contradictory to the first point. But it was let's not be overtly sexual in public. but let's be very much in public.
And I always talk about the difference between the Cosby show and Will and Grace, the number one show of the 80s, versus one of the shows that emerged as a top five show in the last mid-90s, where everything happened in the family in the Cosby show. Cliff Huxtable, the dad had all the answers. That's where you went to get your problem solved. But in Will and Grace, the families weren't there. If they showed up with a mom or a dad presence, they were the problem.
And Will was where you went to get all your problems solved.
So, Will was the Cliff Huxtable of Will and Grace. That's what I mean in terms of what the after-the-ball strategy was.
Now what's happened, and this has actually led to, I think, some conflict within that community. And we talked about the fights between particularly the L's and the Ts, but there's more and more fights now between the Gs and the Ts. And of course the you know we kind of have a common enemy at this point in terms of movements But you have the L and the G's are saying, stop transing our gay kids. I mean, that's the new motto. And you're like, wait, I'm not on board with that at all.
But the T's have brought back in this hypersexualization in public through drag queen story hours and things like that. And you know who it is. It's those middle-aged men. that are sexually broken in pretty profound ways.
So, yeah, I mean, there's a whole narrative of this, but there is a point in the philosophy. Because remember all of this is an identity. that you have to make this front and center. You have to normalize. You have to portray, and all this, by the way.
I mean, you could read through the strategy, normalize gay and gayness. Portray them as the sympathetic, portray them as the heroes. But then also. portray any disagreement or any hostility as violence. You know, that's all in there too.
So you look back at it and you say, oh, that's where this ends.
So that's the kind of history. The history was very overtly sexualized. And then it became, let's normalize. And that's what happens to children.
So you just get it in front. You know, Heather has two mommies, and da-da-da-da-da. And that's where that goes. Right.
Well, maybe this is a good time to talk about another. Tragic story in our own community.
So this week, The very famous, well-known Pentecostal pastor, Jimmy Swagger, passed away. I think he was 90. Extremely influential. kind of televangelist, had a huge brand, but very notably had some very high profile sexual scandals of his own. In the late eighties, was caught with a prostitute, apologized, and then a few years later caught again.
When his denomination tried to encourage him, basically said he couldn't do ministry for a year after the first one, he left the denomination to continue doing ministry.
So a very Checkered past, that seems like a light way of putting it. Prolific gospel singer. He's cousins with Jerry Lee Lewis. I didn't realize that. But he passed away this week.
I didn't have a ton of interaction with his work. He was a little bit before my time. But gosh, I was. Sad to read his story. Not at all going to conclude that he's not with Jesus right now, just like anybody could be.
But Sexual sin occurs everywhere. It does. The Swaggart story is a fascinating one, and a lot of it has to do with a moment in time. We talk about all, you know, the importance of studying church history, and then you realize you're part of it. You kind of live through it.
And there actually was a lot of things happening. coming out of the Second World War, coming out of the the boomer generation, the rise of television. and teleevangelist uh empires And then Very, very public. False. Very, very public crises.
I mean, the other part of the swaggered story was that he was.
Someone who was very outspoken in one of the early Kind of gargantuan scandals of Jim Baker, and the bakers, of course, had the television show and it was enormous. They had a whole community outside of Charlotte. in North Carolina and Swaggart was very critical of that and then had his own scandal just a few years later. And of course, you carry on through three or four or five others, and you end up with Ted Haggart, you know, a major figure here in Colorado Springs, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. And even the tale of that scandal continues.
Uh we've had recently You know, the founder of Gateway Church, an enormous church outside of Dallas, Robert Morris. That was you know, something that dated back early on.
So there is a history of this, and part of this for me has always been you study church history, not that To gain confidence in the church, but to gain confidence in the Christ of the church, because the church should have never survived. But it has, and the Swaggert story, perhaps more than any other. brings up Questions about authority. Within the church, within the church structure? What does it mean to be the church, to borrow our phrase from our Colson Center National Conference, in that way?
How do you deal with sin and repentance? And this is a question that goes all the way back to the very first days of the church, where you had. this extreme uptick in persecution. Of Christian, early Christians, and some of the leaders of the church. In order to save their lives, these are very well-documented stories.
Denied Christ. And then when the persecution died down. Were they still bishops? Were they still leaders in the church? The church really had to deal with this.
And apparently, we still do because what does it mean for someone to enter back into ministry? Particularly in a culture like ours, which is way different. you know, than the beleaguered first and second century believers. Because we have so many different authorities within the church. We have such a divided church.
You know, the legend is when Martin Luther. was making his argument at the Diet of Worms. The archbishop knocked a chalice off the table and it shattered. And he said, If you're right, that's the church. It's not a bad analogy of what we've seen, honestly, where you have this kind of.
You know, it kind of reminds me since it's July 4th, I'll bring up that line again from the Patriot where Mel Gibson early on says, why would I trade? You know, a king a thousand miles away for a thousand kings one miles away.
Well, that's kind of where the church is. We've given up, you know. At least in evangelicalism, the pope a thousand miles away for a thousand popes everywhere. And The last thing I'll say about the Swaggart story. I have a little bit more visibility.
There's that empire continues, although it's different than it was back in the heyday of the late 70s. His son, Donny Swaggart, now. Leeds what is a radio and television ministry. You know, in that southern gospel kind of mold, a Pentecostal kind of mold, still has a decent, you know. reach and It reaches a particular part of the country and a particular group around the world.
But that generation is fading. larger than life. Leaders And if you think about the Jerry Falwells and the Billy Grahams and the Chuck Coulsons, and you know, I'm not lumping them all as if they did and behaved and believed the same things because that to me, Chuck stands alone in terms of in a lot of ways. But you go through the Charles Stanleys and the Ah, what's the guy's name in Memphis? I'm forgetting his name.
Adrian Rogers. There we go. You know, we have emerged out of a unique time in evangelical history, and we're shaped by that history. We're shaped by these kind of big leader kind of people. Many of whom were authorities in and of themselves.
And unless they put themselves under authority, in some way. You know, they're not the worst things that ever happened to the world, although. I think the newer generation of the church always likes to complain about the older one, and the older one always likes to complain about the younger one. But I think it's important to learn from this history. There's a lot more to be said here, but that's probably enough for now.
It's funny, that's what I was gonna say, is that I I think I'm like pre like one generation after that kind of m heyday. And so I have like an inborn skepticism of, you know, celebrity pastor But that could be somewhat a product of my generation, but also You know, it's just a sketchy past, man. I'm just skeptical that that level of. Fame for someone who is preaching the gospel is ever healthy. And we've just, we've seen so many times when men just don't respond well to it.
But there are certainly exceptions.
So let's take a quick break, John. We'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week. Do you and your spouse want to grow in your faith and make a difference in your family or church? Consider going through the Colson Fellows Program together. Colson Fellows is a carefully curated study of Christian worldview, complete with books, webinars, and monthly discussions with the cohort.
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That's colsonfellows.org. We're back on breakpoint this week. John, you just mentioned that line from the Patriot. I wanted to talk to you about July 4th, and I will say I am. Very cynical and disappointed this morning because I went and Googled July 4th and I don't know what I was expecting.
I was looking, I was hoping like a very lovely essay, somebody, you know, maybe somebody's posting to Tocqueville in honor of this 249th birthday. And unfortunately, all the headlines were like: Department of Homeland Security is warning about lone wolf attacks, and here's what you need to look out for on your July 4th celebrations, given that the U.S. just. completed this operation in Iran.
So not not very celebratory. But I did find some red, white, and blue starred napkins that I'm really excited to use later at our cookout.
So I have that going for me. Do you think July 4th still means to the American people, maybe the church too? what it used to? You know, that's a good question. I mean, probably not.
And then to some, it does. You know, the further away you you get to it, and I think that's why it's important to highlight definitely a yearly anniversary, but You know, next year is 250 years, and there's already big plans coming out of. Washington DC and from various even Christian groups trying to identify Kind of what does it mean to be the kind of people that we became on that day? July 4th, of course, is when the Continental Congress adopted officially the Declaration of Independence. Which had been ratified on the second.
I don't know if that's the right word, but it basically. And then, you know, went through some edits. What a process. I was looking at some of that history. This week, and Jefferson, of course, did the primary part of that writing just a couple weeks.
With John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, and two others that were part of a committee to draft that document. I mean, can you imagine being on a writing committee with John Adams? That poor guy. I mean, with any of those guys. I mean, you talk about these, these.
really oddly impressive collection. of people. In one place at one time. I think that is part of the story of America's founding. You know, and I believe in the providential work of God in nations, all nations, for better, for worse.
And in America, it's really an inheritance. You kind of look at. at these individuals, some of whom were strong in their faith, some of whom We were not, but all of whom had a particular vision or were willing to embrace a particular vision. of what it means to be human. And um I also read back through the Declaration of Independence here yesterday and.
was kind of looking at this and You know, I think there's a legitimate you know question about whether the That the arguments that are made in the declaration are, you know, a bit hyperbolic. in the sense of you know Was King George really a tyrant in that sense? You know, what were they really... Enslaved to the degree that we've seen? I think the answer is no.
But at the same time That's how these things work, and that's how. You know, these things worked in that time. It was a, you have to understand that it was a time of revolution, it was a time of seeking freedom. But there is an incredible difference. And I'm grateful to my friend Oz Guinness for.
probably articulating this better than others. Not all revolutions are created equal. All revolutions tend to be about kind of trying to acquire freedom. The sexual revolution, clearly about that. The American Revolution, clearly about that, the French Revolution.
clearly about that, but not all definitions of freedom are equal. And that is a huge difference in understanding what took place. You don't have to think that The founders were completely right or completely. good in everything that they did. or Orthodox Christians for that matter.
to think that The the ideals that they were Building for were better than the ideals that were seen later in the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. They're fundamentally different ideas. And it's they're right there in the famous line. I was thinking about this too, Maria.
So earlier this year, And it hit me, although it's happened many, many times. I speak over at Summit Ministries in the summer occasionally. I was over there earlier this summer and there was probably three students there that I Had met earlier on from outside the United States. I think Canada and Mexico, and I forget where the other one was. And, you know, and just talking about.
the definition of the family and what it means to be made in the image of God. and how significant that idea is throughout history. Think about that line. We hold these truths to be self-evident. And the point of the exercise is it's not self-evident that all are equal.
That's the most least self-evident thing in the world. But the founders put it in there. And what I was struck with, Maria, is that I I'll say it and have the students kind of fill in the blank and all the American students know it. But you know who also knows it? All the that's how famous the line is.
Yeah, the Canadian students know it, the Mexican students know it, the Australian students that I've had have known it, other students from South America, students from Europe. They know that line. It is a remarkable line. And I think that's worthy. Uh spending some time on as well, just in your own family.
been thinking about what a remarkable thing that was. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all are created equal.
So and I know I think you and I would hold that truth to be True, because that's because of God, because that this is a Christian worldview. That's how God, God made people equal, and Jesus taught us that people were equal. Does what you're saying, does the fact that our Declaration says that make us a Christian nation.
Well, it's interesting because to be clear, you and I would say that, but the document also says that. It doesn't mention Jesus, but it... Does say that they are endowed by their creator. And that is a profound difference than a French revolution that's trying to free itself from God and trying to free itself from religion. In other words, you don't have equality.
You don't even have any grounds for equality unless you actually have a creator. And that, of course, is something that Frederick Nietzsche noted when he said human dignity came out of a Christian view of the world. That's something that Luke Ferry at the University of Paris has written about in his book, A Brief History of Thought. I mean, he talks about this idea. that there's an equality Indignity.
In other words, that's an equality that's intrinsic, not an equality based on anything extrinsic. He says that it was where The world got its entire democratic inheritance. That's what Ferry says. And he's a secular humanist. He doesn't believe it.
But he believes that it's an important idea. There's no other source for it. The founders clearly put themselves in that Line of thought. And in that sense, yes, that's a Christian ideal. Mm-hmm.
In the sense, are all the founders evangelical Christians? Are all the founders Have a personal faith in Jesus Christ. No, I don't think there's evidence. compelling evidence for that. I think there's compelling evidence that There was various lines of deism.
But you know, what the 19th century secularists called deism wasn't what even the 18th century founders thought of as deism, in this kind of blind watchmaker, God has no hand at all in the universe. None of them believed that. They all had a strong sense of providence. They had in a sense of uh appeal. Even if they thought that there was some abuse and corruption that came out of the church and they were wary.
Of that authority, and you know, coming out of the Church of England and the wars in Europe, that made it made sense.
So, in that sense, no, we're not, but in the sense that the ideals distinctly come from a source. And by the way, they were ideals. And what an ideal is, is what Something that Paterim Sorokin, who founded the sociology department, or was one of the founding president, founding dean of the sociology department at Harvard University. Talks about in terms of his book, Dividing Up Civilizations. He contrasts, for example, civilizations that are oriented around ideals, things to aspire to.
Right? and civilizations that are sensei. And they're oriented around the census, immediate gratification. This is an ideal. I mean, all men are created equal.
First of all, We didn't live that way then. We still don't live that way now. If you consider from You know, America's original sin of slavery to America's contemporary sin. Yeah, that's the only thing. When you trace that out, these are still things we're aspiring to.
But when you orient a civilization or a society towards something higher, than immediate gratification. It becomes a different kind of society. And that's what Petirum Sorokin argued, having looked at all civilizations. He talked about civilizations that were building and growing and expanding or spiraling upwards. and those that were spiraling downwards.
And the difference was whether they were oriented around ideals or they were oriented around immediate gratification. And It's a A powerful thing to think about. Because there's also the story of those civilizations that become mixes of those two, right? maybe start around an ideal and then they devolve. and to something more immediate.
And you think about, you mentioned de Tocqueville.
So de Tocqueville's kind of, you know, he comes in the 1800s. looks at America and, uh, it you know, uh wh when it's past the revolution, you know, before Yeah. You know, certainly before the 20th century and all the changes that happened when America became a world superpower and And he sees things in the American experiment. That are unique, you know, family and. voluntary associations, this sense of building.
And he recognizes that, and it's not perfect. people want to describe to Tocqueville as Talking about American exceptionalism and some sort of ontological way. It wasn't. It was just it it it it it had things. that were reflections of this ideal.
And that's why it was so different, I think. Yeah. And I think the ideal is a great word because not only is it a Christian idea that men are created equal. But it is a Christian contribution to the world. that to be equal and treated equally is good.
Right.
And I mean, that's something Tom Holland talks about all the time. Really one of, if not the most Revolutionary ideas. of Christianity. was subverting the weak versus the strong paradigm. There was just no, there was really no picture of that before Jesus.
There was certainly no valuing of that. There's no picture of it before Jesus. There was no national picture of it even later, right?
So you got to think. You know, Jesus introduces this crazy idea that, you know, you should actually Run into the plague and care for the poor. And I mean, you know, and that people who don't. don't as strong and don't contribute as much or just as you know have just as much dignity and value right that value is intrinsic not extrinsic and so then you have to trace that out generations before you get it into political thought And then orient a nation around that political. I mean, that's the you know, it takes a while.
Well, unfortunately, I don't think this, you know, this Department of Homeland Security warning or whatever is completely unrelated to the conversation because When we start to lose that ideal, not necessarily the belief that people are created equal. I think most people, whether or not they live it out, Most people in contemporary America would agree, you know, in word. That they believe that. But whether or not that's good or something that we need to preserve is probably a little bit more up for grabs than it used to be. Things just feel a little bit more unstable.
You know, in our next segment, I want to touch something briefly that gets directly to this idea of whether we're aspiring towards an ideal or we're a sensate culture. I want to talk about gambling with you, but let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with more breakpoint this week. Hey, breakpoint listeners, John Stone Street here from the Colson Center. I want to invite you to join me for an important live stream event, Truth, Love, and Humor, Faith Without Fear. It's July 24th.
I'll be joined by Seth Dillon, the CEO of the Babylon Bee, the one and only Christian satire publication, as well as Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family. We're living in times where to speak the truth can get you canceled, and nobody knows that better than Seth Dillon. And yet, our responsibility to speak the truth doesn't change. Just a few years ago, USA Today named Admiral Rachel Levine, a biological man who identifies and presents as a woman as their so-called woman of the year. In response, the Babylon Bee named Levine the man of the year, and that led to being canceled on Twitter.
But as Seth Dillon says, truth is not hate speech. and their faithfulness to say the truth, even in a humorous way, Has an incredible ending. You'll not want to miss this story as well as an exhortation of what it means to speak the truth in this cultural moment. This event is absolutely free. You can either join us in person if you're in the Bay Harbor, Michigan area, or online via live stream.
To register, go to colsoncenter.org slash truth. That's colsoncenter.org slash truth. Again, the date is July 24th, and the event is Truth, Love, and Humor, Faith Without Fear. We're back on breakpoint this week. Well, John, my state of Ohio, just recently, the governor crossed out a line in the budget that would have legalized Eye gaming.
There are, I think, seven states where this is legal right now. This is not the same as sports betting, which is legal in 30 states. This is on your smartphone, casino, and lottery games. And there's a huge push to legalize it. It's hard to look at the situation and not conclude that, I mean, it's a matter of time before this is legal everywhere.
But the last segment you were talking about. a nation that's organized around ideals and a certain idea of what it means to be human and what it means to live a good life, like a healthy human life ordered towards something outside of us. It's hard not to look at gambling as a direct descent into becoming a sensate culture. Even in this, I was reading the language in this push in Ohio. And it was like, well, don't worry.
I mean, it's obviously the gambling lobby that's pushing for it. We'll put a cap. You can only spend $500 a week. And you can only spend five hours online a week doing this. Which is just that is a shocking amount.
It's just a person sitting in your living room just throwing money at the government, essentially. I mean, it's it's so. It's so disheartening. I don't know if it's legal in Colorado yet. I'm willing to bet it is.
I know New York is sur is considering it now. It's been legal in Michigan for a few years now. It feels like it's coming for everybody, but it is not a good sign, in my opinion. No, it it's it's not. And again, we talked about something along these lines a couple of weeks ago where, you know, in a In a different time and a place, these sorts of laws aren't aren't necessary.
Right, to to prevent them. Because they're unthinkable. It's not wise. You're thinking about something else. And that's really what Sorokin was getting at: it's true of individuals, right?
We know. We all know people who, you know, have a dream and they follow that dream and then they orient their life around that dream. And we also know people who have an addiction and all. That they're doing is around that addiction. We know people.
Who, for example, are able to foresee consequences of their decisions and actions. and take responsibility when they've made a mistake. And we know people that don't. you know, because they want what they want and they want it now. All Sorokin essentially was saying was that If that's true of individuals and that's true of families and you know parents That can also be true of entire civilizations and societies.
Doesn't mean it's uniform across the board. And it also, obviously, we're not talking about. that everyone within a society has become sensate or everyone has become ideational. But it's whether that That the society itself is oriented, whether our institutions are oriented. But let's take, for example, education.
Are our schools oriented towards helping people acquire a A level of understanding about the world. That's aspirational. Or are our schools oriented around helping kids quote unquote be themselves. That's immediate.
So there's just a million ways you can look at this. By the way, Someone who also read along these lines was a British anthropologist named Joseph Unwin. Michael Craven, the dean of the Colson Fellows program, is was the first to introduce me to their thinking in in his book years ago. about culture and about marriage. He used to do a good bit of writing on these things.
And Unwin was an anthropologist who looked at civilizations And he saw it kind of on a more specific level, not as generalized as Sorokin would talk about it later, although Sorokin put a lot of emphasis on the family. As well. But Unwin talked about whether the sexual instinct in particular was restrained or unrestrained, you know, in the society.
So, you know, we've all heard this. analogy about sexuality in youth group or from our parents. And it's true. It's actually a really good one. which is sex is like fire, and fire can bring light and heat.
And it can bring ambiance and it can bring life and preserve life if it's in the fireplace. But the moment it jumps out of the fireplace onto the fire or onto the curtains it then destroys the house. And Sexuality is the fire, and marriage is the fireplace.
Well, that's what Unwin thought. He basically said: look, you have a strong. Marriage culture. then those countries are uh productive and prosperous. If you don't.
Those countries lack what he called creative cultural capital, in other words, the ability to build. And if you have it and you lose it, then you got about three generations before you demise. That was his summary.
So The gambling is an example of this, right? Because I often look at the The high levels of debt that happen, you know, both, and it's consumer debt primarily with. with people. It's not debt towards a higher end, like, you know, I'm going to go to medical school or law school. National debt is immediate gratification to, you know.
support the port that's being put in all of our spending bills. It's to add, you know, kind of really bizarre sorts of things to support ideological movements. The other thing is demographics, right? When you want sex, but you don't want children, the separation of sex and children. We know we're a highly sexualized society.
But we're also a society where the birth rate's going down. When you do that math, That's a sensate thing as well. And yeah, I think gambling fits into that. As well, right? Because it's It's one thing to say, you know, I want to build this.
I want to. I want to build this career. I want to reach that earning level. By becoming the best at my trade. That's different than playing the lottery.
So, how did we get from? The culture of 1776, or my idealized version of it, maybe. Still been idealized. To where we're now. It's funny when you were talking about the diverse group of men who signed.
I mean, didn't John Adams and Jefferson just hate each other? Like, that would have been an interesting room to have been in. Also, I have to point out that I believe there is still a running joke around the Coulson Center because one time I tried to share this analogy about the fireplace and where sex belongs. And I Said it clumsily, and I said something like, Sex belongs in the fireplace. And everybody I was talking to was like, I'm sorry, what?
I need you to repeat what you said. You must not have been part of that conversation. But how did we get?
So, my current hypothesis is that a lot of this is. the sexual revolution, but more so technology, because Life is just so much easier than it used to be, and everything takes so much less time, right? It used to take an entire day. For a woman to wash her family's clothing because you had to do it one piece at a time and you didn't have a machine.
Now you have a machine. I would say it's morally neutral whether you use the machine or not, but it is just a fact that if all I did in a day was a load of laundry in my washing machine, I would feel a very different level of personal productivity than if I had washed every piece of clothing in a bucket, right? Is that kind of a small picture of what led us to this like is life just too easy and if it is Do we need to make it harder just for the purpose of Protecting ourselves against this kind of like inane hedonism of gambling? Yeah, I don't think it's about industrialization because what industrialization did in terms of a net Positive is that it increased productivity. It didn't decrease productivity.
I mean, unless you just jump right away. to basically paying someone else to do all of our work or something like that. That's not kind of how it works. We automated a lot of it, though. That's what I think.
Yeah, but automation, again, increased productivity.
So when you think of the A natural disaster hitting. We've talked about this in the past. infrastructure in certain places that For example, the food supply chain can be disrupted for a week or two weeks and people aren't starving. In other places, that's not the case because, and that's all industrialization. and industrial and technological innovation.
Is there a point, and we talk about this all the time, where our technological innovation. interrupts our humanness or confuses us in what it means to be human. Yes. And do I think that there's been a incredible How do I want to put it? There's been an incredible amount of.
confusion and deception on what work is. and the good of work? You know, we had David Bonson at the Colson Center National Conference. He's done remarkable work. His book on work, which we have talked about a lot.
You know, hits this.
Now, where do you get that vision for work, though? Where do you get that vision for what life is supposed to be? And the answer is: you get it from your family.
So I think that it doesn't matter what kind of technological innovation you have in a particular Um it In some settings, because if you have that framing of reality of what it means to be human. And what it means to be responsible for others, and what it means to be a member of a community, and responsible as a member of a community. Then then then the technology is going to be a tool. for greater productivity, not a replacement for what it means to be human. And for your work.
And I don't think it's. I don't think we should blame technologies specifically for that or go back to the Stone Age. There is this line, and I think you see the same sort of cycle emerge in the book of Judges. Where is basically hard times produce great men, and great men produce good times, and good times. produce soft men and soft men produce hard times.
And, you know, and that's the way it's cyclical. And I don't think history is cyclical, and I don't think it's as simple as all that. But there is something about it's m and I don't think it's just the context. I think It is the institutions that God has ordained in our lives. That essentially, in God's grace, are used to make us think about the future.
specifically the institution of marriage. is the thing that makes you think about the future. Right.
You have to have something that turns your attention outward.
Now, historically, of course, the institution of marriage went hand in hand. You know, this was before Obergerfell. went hand in hand with procreation. Nothing makes you think about the future more than kids. Nothing does.
There's nothing. There's not a thing. You can be a student of history, have your own kid, and you're thinking about the future in a different way. Have a bunch of kids and you're thinking about the future. you know differently so When you see The decline of marriage, the decline of mar marital fidelity, the redefining of marriage through things like no-fault divorce.
which turned marriage Uh from an institution about the future to an institution about immediate happiness. Before Obergefell or any of the other things did. That is a, I think, a much, much, much bigger. uh factor in in this I think the other thing Christianity offers is a view of like a coming kingdom that we, each of us, have a responsibility to take part in building. you know, through discipleship and certainly evangelization.
but also just taking care of our corner of the world. Materially and spiritually, until Jesus comes back, right? That's a calling on everybody. And that gives everybody intrinsically, no matter how old or your marital status or whatever else, a job to do that is worth doing despite discomfort and hardship and whatever else. And I think we can look at the world and conclude that people need that.
Just as a principle, something. To do that gives them a sense of worth and meaning, something that they offer the world, that they intuit, that nobody else could offer, even in a very small personal way. And I don't see much of that on offer elsewhere. And I do think that the more things get automated. Despite all of the good and flourishing that has brought, that we risk that.
And it will be good to think ahead of time. About ways to guard against exactly what you said, the possibility that these things could rob us of our humanity. Part of our humanity is. having a job to do. Right?
For better or worse. I think everybody just needs that.
Well, John, let's talk about some recommendations for this week. I think that's probably where we should head next. I would love to recommend. I probably have before, but this is a great time to do it. Andrew Wilson's book, Pastor Andrew Wilson wrote 1776, Remaking the World.
A fascinating book, not just about the founding of America, but about everything else that was happening culturally in the West, but globally at that time, and why that was such a pivotal time for human civilization and what the changes in the West meant for the rest of the world. It really made me proud to be American as well. I'll recommend that. And then also, if you haven't, the next time you're in Washington, DC, if you find yourself there, I highly, highly recommend going to the National Archives. It took some cajoling to get my kids to agree to go to that museum as opposed to some of the other ones.
We'd already been to Aaron Space, so they were okay with it. But it really delivered. It was cooler than I assumed. And just looking at the Declaration and the Constitution and all kinds of, you know, you can listen to presidential phone calls that they have recordings of in there. It is really, really cool.
So check that out in the spirit of July 4th. Happy birthday, Uncle Sam. Go to the archives. It's a great recommendation, both of them. I really like the Liberty Kids animated series, and I think almost all of it is on.
YouTube now, so it can actually be accessed. This was It's a remarkable cast that voice these story of America's. the American Revolution and the Declaration and even beyond. I mean, it is an A list of Hollywood celebrities. participating.
in an American friendly Series. I think it handles the complications of slavery really thoughtfully. And we'll give you lots of things to talk about with your kids. I can't believe some of these guys haven't been canceled yet for participating in this thing. But I appreciate that series a lot.
That's awesome.
Well, thank you as always for listening to Breakpoint this week. I'm sorry we did not get to any of your questions and comments this week, but please be confident that we have a growing list of those, and we are excited to get to more of them in future shows. You can head over to breakpoint.org and click on contact us if you want to send in your feedback. Thank you to all those of you who've done that so far. For the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stone Street.
Have a wonderful 4th of July. We'll see you all back here next week.
Whisper: parakeet / 2025-07-05 20:33:56 / 2025-07-05 20:35:21 / 1
