Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth, for the Colson Center. I'm John Stone Street. Men have forgotten God. That's the reason that was given by author and dissident Alexander Soltonitsyn after fifty years of studying and writing about the history of the Russian Revolution, which led to the death of over sixty million people. In fact, he continued, and I quote, What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the end of the century, against the backdrop of what has since occurred in the rest of the world.
What emerges here is a process of universal significance. And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, Here too. I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again. Men have forgotten God. Well, if his analysis were extended to today to include the cultural chaos that has emerged in the years after the Cold War into the first decades of the 21st century, it might be this.
And forgetting God, they abandoned truth. The abandonment of truth took the form of increasingly bizarre demands, especially within academia, government, and media, to accommodate what were obvious lies and myths and falsehoods. According to Romans 1, the primary consequence of rejecting the Creator is, in fact, to believe lies about reality and about morality and about the human person. In our day these lies are often sold to us with demands of inclusion and equity and with the promise of being free. free from traditional moral constraints, even free from the restrictions imposed by reality itself.
Now those promises have proven to be as false as the lies themselves. Instead of freedom, we've now built ourselves a world with epidemic levels of unhappiness and isolation, not to mention the increased use of power and manipulation to enforce these ideas that are obviously not true. Men have forgotten God, and thus have abandoned the notion of truth. That's the basic description of what Os Guinness has called our civilizational moment. a pivotal time in the history of the West.
A fascinating development in recent years has been watching as former skeptics about truth and God have now rethought the significance of both.
Some who just decades ago were proclaiming to us that God is a delusion and religion a poison, now talk about all that we've lost by abandoning God and religion. But of course there are others who have just doubled down on the deception. Still, how God calls His people to engage in this moment is really no different than how He has called Christians in every other moment. We're called to bow our hearts and our knee to Jesus Christ, the source of all truth, the embodiment of God's love for the world. Christians are to be truth-tellers.
and to tell the truth in the way that God has told us to tell the truth. At the very least, that means not only knowing what's true, it means having confidence in what's true. otherwise will respond to the deceptions and the deceivers of our time and place with either silence or anger.
Now silence is never an appropriate response. Anger can occasionally be called for, but never in place of loving those who are the victims of the lies. At the same time, we should never confuse love with niceness. It's never loving to be co-opted into deception. What it means to live out this essential calling that all Christians have, to be truth-tellers.
In this critical cultural moment, is the focus of the upcoming Great Lakes Symposium, Thursday, July 24th. Please join me for Truth, Love and Humor, Faith Without Fear, along with Jim Daly, President of Focus on the Family, who will be talking about Truth and Love Without Compromise, and Seth Dillon, President and CEO of the one and only Babylon Be. Not only is the Babylon Bee everyone's favorite quote-unquote fake news site, they have mastered the art of using humor to tell the truth. In fact, they were kicked off Twitter for doing that. And that's a story that literally has it all.
Where does humor and satire fit within a Christian worldview? What truths are essential to tell in this cultural moment? What are the costs that might come for telling the truth? And what does it mean to commit to telling the truth? and leave the results up to God.
Truth, love, and humor, faith without fear is absolutely free, but you have to register. If you live near Bay Harbor, Michigan, please join us in person at the Great Lakes Center for the Performing Arts at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, Thursday, July 24th. Otherwise, you can sign up to join the live stream. Learn more and register at greatlakesymposium.org.
That's greatlakesymposium.org. The promises of freedom by abandoning the truth have all failed us. But Jesus' promise to give us freedom is sure and it's certain. And it comes through, as he said it, knowing the truth. In other words, by calling people to the truth, Christians offer the world freedom.
That is our calling. especially in this civilizational moment. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. And for a version of this commentary that you can print out and share with others, go to breakpoint.org. If you're hesitant to speak up about your Christian beliefs because you're worried about being criticized publicly or shut down, even canceled, Maybe you're trying to help your kids or students build courage when they face challenges.
The new Colson Educators course, Navigating Cancel Culture, is here and can help. Created in partnership with No Safe Spaces, the documentary by Dennis Prager, the course is led by the Colson Center and Brett Kunkel. Using real-life examples, the course explains cancel culture, how it shows up today, and why truth matters. How you can learn practical ways to stand firm and push back. Ready to join?
Go to colsoneducators.org. That's colsoneducators.org. to sign up.
