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 the hurricane that has hit Jamaica and how that country is recovering. We're also going to talk about Halloween. Should Christians trick-or-treat? We have a lot to get to this week.
We're so glad you're with us. Stick around. Welcome to Breakpoint This Week. From the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street, president of the Coulson Center. John, I thought of you this week.
I've been watching the news about Hurricane Melissa making landfall historically in Jamaica. This is the Worst storm on record to hit the island. And, you know, there have been some horrible reports already of the damage done there. And I know you spent some time down there. It's been quite a while.
I know you're quite old at this point, John.
So much older than me. But tell me about what you remember about Jamaica and its readiness or lack of readiness for something like this. Is this as scary as it sounds?
Well, I'm sure it's a different place than when I was there 20 or so years ago, but I did spend several months there right out of college. Did some coaching of basketball and other things, lived in Montego Bay, which those are the images right now. There's a couple other cities that got hit pretty hard, but. The Montego Bay images are pretty brutal and the area is just kind of right around there. And I mean, you know, listen, it's something we've talked about before that it's There's two sides of of these kinds of conversations.
One is The idea that we are in control as human beings over the world around us, which has been kind of the whole scientific enterprise since the modern world. You know, not just that science is the act of discovering what's in the world, but actually controlling. That's really more of an illusion. And than anything else. And it's something that we get reminded of.
We used to have a colleague at the Colson Center that would say, You know, we live here by permission of nature, who can rescind that permission at any time. And when you talk about a coastal area and you talk about a place, it's just absolutely incredible. I mean, there were sunsets I saw walking home. from the Boys and Girls Club in Montego Bay that just would take your breath away. You just hadn't seen anything like it.
And You know, it gives you that illusion that it's paradise, that you're under control, and that sort of stuff. But Any conversation having to do with natural disasters and hurricanes is Where it hits makes a big difference. And I don't just mean geographically, I mean culturally. What kind of culture a natural storm like that. Hits Makes an incredible difference in terms of resiliency, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of being able to absorb.
a level of destruction. We've seen that kind of up close and personal, you know, whether you're talking about a a place that has invested heavily. In long-term thinking, you know, there's a difference between building A building for the immediate moment and building it for 20, 30, or 100 years. And there are some cultures, some communities that just aren't able to do that. You know, when I was there, Montego Bay was trying to figure out whether it was a tourist city or whether it was going to be a a city.
And I think it's developed since then, and there's been additional infrastructure built and so on.
So, we'll see what comes out of it.
So far, it's not good. And we know from other communities, they're just not in the Caribbean. In particular, that once you talk about something that's so low-lying, you talk about a storm. That really was unprecedented in some ways. I know we say that like all the time with every new storm, but this one was quite a doozy.
for that kind of a place, but it's just not a culture. That has a lot of long-term thinking built in, and that will show itself.
Some of the great sociologists looking at civilizations talked about whether a certain culture is living for the moment or living for the future. And this is one of those incidents that will reveal that. And I think we'll see it. Obviously, my heart and prayers were with some friends. I had a lot of friends that are still in Jamaica.
Don't keep track of very many of them, but I've certainly been thinking about them, watching some of those images come through. I think when some people hear that. I remember hearing the first time that you kind of taught in this vein. I think we were talking about something in Haiti. Maybe it was the earthquake or something that had happened there.
And I think some people will hear it, and this is, I know, this is not the way that you intend it. But here at conflating culture with like eth ethnicity maybe. Or basically suggesting, like, if it if storms hit some people, then they react better than other people. And I know that's not what you're saying. Can you clarify like what kind of cultures Why is it that we have infrastructure here, for example, and we're able to think more long term?
Than a place like Jamaica.
Well, I mean, at some point there there's something to do with worldview, and at some point it's just to do with resources, right? I mean, if you have the resources to build a better building, you build a better building. Just like if you have the resources to build a bigger house. You build a bigger house. If you don't, then you don't.
Second, you have the question of worldview, which is: am I responsible to take care of my own business here? Or am I looking to somebody else to save me. I mean that was a A a a blatant Difference within the United States. Of course, the United States is made up of many cultures, but if you look at For example, the long-term impact of something like Hurricane Harvey and the long-term impact of something like Hurricane Katrina. It's not a perfect science by any means, but there's a big difference.
In terms of loss of life, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of You know, how you look out for each other, who you think's job it is to help. That's a big thing. You know, and now, obviously, there's some levels of storms. And I think to some degree that this is that kind of a storm in Jamaica. But, you know, I listen, I I I walked in and out of neighborhoods where I went to church.
I mean, I remember these homes. This is still the way these homes are built. You know, that's they're flooded and washed away after the roof blew off. I mean, there's just, it's just not possible.
So some of that is resources, some of that is worldview. You know, Jamaica also has another obviously big part of its history, which is it was a slave island. It was a central island of the slave trade. I always sensed in in some ways that place it was was kind of organized chaos. There was a a a desire To have a level of organization, a level of infrastructure, a level of progress, a level of.
Of civil society. And but then there was still the underlying chaos. That that that I think Well, you know, it it I think it was shaped by a a lot of things.
Well, I'll give you one example. If you have a community. That's made up of A bunch of men. who think that their job is to raise a family and to take care of their family. and that they're the number one place to go to, that's not Jamaica.
I I was twenty years twenty one years old. I got in a taxi and A guy asked me how many kids I had. I was like, well, none. And he goes, What? How can you be 21 and not have any kids?
Now, there were more churches on the island in Jamaica per capita than any other nation in the world the year that I was down there. It's a very religious place. It's a mixed place. And a lot of the Christianity is very Gnostic. You know, historically.
So, all that plays in as well. But ideas have consequences. What you think is the scope of religion, what certainly how the the role that family plays. There's a lot of fatherless homes at the root of the community.
So that plays out too. Yeah, that's fascinating.
Well, let's continue our discussion about culture.
Now, I don't think, I don't know a lot about Jamaican culture, but I might be conflating it with sort of some of the like French quarter New Orleans culture. But I'm thinking of like voodoo and things like that, because as we're recording this, it's about to be Halloween, right? And so some of that culture has certainly infiltrated our expression of Halloween in the US. And for that reason, many Christians are adverse to celebrating it or trick-or-treating or dressing up or whatever it might be. Other Christians seem to not worry about it and embrace it.
And this is a topic we've revisited several times over the years. And you have a great kind of lexicon that you use, I think, to walk us through this. What's your take on Halloween? Do we do it or do you have a lexicon? I don't know.
No, you have a lexicon. Are you remembering something that I'm not remembering? I'm remembering Taboo or Not Taboo. That's a funny title. That is a funny title.
That is like the breakpoint commentary title that I am most proud of in history. And it was mine. I did come up with that Taboo or Not Taboo. That is the question. I always thought that was super clever, but everyone at the Coulson Center now rolls their eyes at it.
And so no one actually thinks it's cool anymore. But I thought it was awesome for years. I still actually. I think it's pretty cool. No, Jamaica does not have the same kind of voodoo that Haiti does.
That's actually an interesting conversation, too. Listen, I feel like we just kind of stuck our toe in that water and maybe going to get ourselves in trouble on that. But it's such an important conversation.
So remember, culture is what people make of the world, right? And there is a wonderful book that talks about this on a national level. We think about worldview and the impact that it has on individuals, how we interpret the bad things that happen in our life, or how we think. You know, we should make moral decisions, or how we understand our role as a dad, or as a mom, or as a, you know, a church member, or something like that. All that's true.
But when you start seeing the culture-wide implications of worldview, what you're basically saying is. Culture is what humans make of the world. It's not the world. It's the worlds that humans make of the world. And we make the kind of world that we make because of what.
We think is valuable, what we think is true, what we think is good.
So Worldview has this kind of cultural application. as well. You might say that, you know, culture is kind of the hardware and Worldview is the software that drives the hardware and so on. And so you do see a dramatic difference, for example, on the same island with the same set of natural resources, oftentimes enduring the same storm between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And there's a whole history there.
There's also a whole history in Jamaica. There is a little voodooish sort of thing there, but. Really what they're dealing with, I think, historically has been something maybe a little bit different. None of that has to do with Halloween. I appreciated the transition you try to make to Halloween, but I've Started thinking about Halloween-ness and how yeah, yeah.
Do you guys celebrate Halloween? Oh gosh, I'm nervous about this. Yeah. You can get in trouble by saying this out loud. I love Halloween, but I love a very maybe narrowly defined, I love the fall.
So that's what I love: pumpkins and jumping in leaves. And I love that. Celebrate some harvest, that sort of stuff. Yeah, and dressing up in cute costumes. I don't do any of the, you know, demonic.
And I think it's really tacky and weird. In recent years, it feels like these decorations have exploded and people have like. zombies and weird Dead-looking things in their yards and the giant skeletons like that, I think, is gross and silly. Um and you know, we've come to know over the years the houses that we avoid because they straight up scare my kids. It's a really big deal in my neighborhood.
I live in a really cute historic neighborhood, but a lot of the grown ups that live down here like to go way too far with it. But as far as trick-or-treating and saying happy Halloween and having a friendly-looking little skeleton on my front door, yeah, I definitely do that. Do you guys do it? I we've never done a made a big deal out of it. The neighborhood we were in was kind of like that Early.
Now we're in a neighborhood that's so spread out that no one Yeah. Trick-or-treats or anything like that. You have to walk like a mile and a half to get to the next person's. Yeah, it just doesn't fly. But, you know, but that was part of the problem.
I didn't mind having people come to my house and ask for candy if they were like, you know, seven. It was the 18-year-olds that were dressed like death and scaring my kids. And that was like, that was. I just got mad at that point. I will say Hunter had a, my son had a really cool costume this year, and we don't do anything.
Like, it was completely him. And he put it all together. He squints from the sand lot. Which if you don't know about this, so it was his own idea, thought it was awesome. That is, and uh he's you know, he's walking around talking about Wendy Peppercorn.
And, you know, this is just Okay, I'm sorry, but this is again the difference between boys and girls. My oldest was Anne of Green Gables.
So, right, I mean, come on. Yeah, that's pretty funny.
So, uh, but listen, it's interesting to me. One of a couple parts of the conversation, I always find this to be a really interesting conversation, right? Because You always have two, I think, equal and opposite mistakes that you can make when it comes to the supernatural. One is to deny it. and to pretend like it doesn't exist, and the other is to give it too much credit.
And we do this when it comes to evil. And something like Halloween. We certainly have a culture that tries to. Celebrate it as a kind of, and in many ways, many people use it as a license to indulge in that evil. And I'm not just talking about the celebration of death and ghouls and You know, that sort of stuff.
But to celebrate violence, to celebrate evil, to celebrate demons, you know. And as if they're not really real, as if they're not really existent. I think it's bizarre we're in this trend of, you know. Middle-aged soccer moms that use this as an excuse to just completely lose all track of modesty. You know, that also happens in there.
So it it's basically The mistake being made there is to revel in it. as if it's not a real danger. The other side, though, I think, the other mistake that we can make is to forget that when Christ rose from the dead, he defeated death and evil. And the devil. And I think that that is something that the early church really wrestled with as well.
This balance. I don't know if balance, I always hate balance because I feel like something always gets cheated. But really understanding that evil is real, but that evil is defeated.
So evil is a real foe as Alvin Planiga, or sorry, Neil Planiga, Cornelius Planiga, put it in his book on sin, but it's a defeated foe. And that has to frame. what we think and talk about.
So many leaders in the early church would chide Christians who were overly scared. Of the demonic, of the supernatural, because it, in their mind, it was a way of. Undermining the power of the resurrection and all that that meant in Jesus Christ. And of course, the other side is they would never then pretend, like, oh, there's no such thing as a devil, and there's no such thing as demons, and there's not actually evil powers. And I think that that's the challenge when it comes to Halloween.
Certainly, I mean, Halloween has become. a cultural corporate in many ways nightmare in my view, right? I mean It's kind of like legalizing marijuana. Like, why are we celebrating this? Why are we incentivizing this kind of thing?
But I think the Christian vision actually helps us with this. I think it helps us to kind of. Again, miss those two opposite ways of Of missing the truth on that, pretending like the supernatural is not real. That's not legitimate, pretending like the supernatural. Is real and has all the power over sin and heaven and hell and life and death.
Well, no, Jesus Christ does, right? That's what we believe. And I. I would love for Christians to kind of pioneer a new way here, right? And I think many have.
Not just those who super cleverly. Nail 95 Rhesus peanut butter cups on their door as a way to celebrate Martin Luther. I always think that's hilarious. But um Yeah, I I think there's a way we can do this better and do this differently. By the way, I also have a problem with training my kid to walk around and beg for stuff, you know, because I'm I'm I'm I'm a pretty convinced capitalist.
So I'm like, hey, you wanna buy candy? Go make some money and buy some candy, kids. Break their leaves first and then you can have the candy. No, the payment is dressing up like adorably cute. Right.
Why it should be for, yeah, nine. Yeah, I don't want to encourage that as a, as a, as, as a life skill. That is not a life skill. Yeah. Fair enough.
Let's take a quick break, John. We'll be right back with more breakpoint this week. Hi, John Stone Street here from the Colson Center. If you've ever taken a close look at a really old church building, most of the time, You can find a cornerstone. A lot of times, the cornerstone will bear the names of the founders who built the church, not just to last during their time.
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So please join us, laying a strong foundation for the future by becoming a cornerstone monthly partner of the Colson Center. Visit us at colsoncenter.org slash monthly. That's colsoncenter.org slash monthly. We're back on breakpoint this week. John, I want to talk now about the Supreme Court.
So there is a petition. for a consideration of a case that The Supreme Court has these occasional meetings where they'll get together behind closed doors and decide whether to take a case. And they're having one of those meetings next week. It's on the docket. And there's some expectation that they'll consider this petition.
And this is a case by Kim Davis. who was uh worked at a courthouse in Kentucky, I believe. who directly after the Obergefell decision, which Granted basically created this so-called right to same-sex marriage in all 50 states. Kim Davis, this clerk of the court, refused to administer licenses to same-sex couples. And she was then challenged for emotional damages by a gay couple.
And she is now seeking First Amendment protections. But her petition is also calling into question the validity of the Obergefell decision itself.
So this is a big swing. I have no doubt that the folks who are organizing this and pushing forward have much more legal education than I do and are playing chessnot checkers here. But let's start with this. Do you think it's likely that the Supreme Court will take this challenge? No, I don't.
I don't think it's likely that they're going to take up the whole challenge as it's presented. And by the way, I think you did a really good job right there describing there are two. things here. That Kim Davis' attorney, Matt Staver, is a wonderful guy, been a force of a religious liberty lawyer for quite some time. There's two things that they're asking for.
And I think they're doing it boldly. And I think that that's fine. You know, the one side is. Is that given all the advances? Think about what when O'Bergefell was passed and all the cases then that have gone to the Supreme Court.
Jack Phillips and um uh 303 creative And others, where they had to kind of flesh through what are the limits of religious. Freedom and what are the limits of expression, of freedom of expression with this new reality of same-sex marriage when you're compelling somebody's conscience? The challenge with Kim Davis is she was an agent of the state, and the Supreme Court has decided in other cases. That just because you work for the state doesn't mean you lose your conscience rights. You still have a First Amendment if you work for the state.
Now, those limits can be in other places, and that's really the conversation is about that. But then they've also, and this is the, I think, the swing for the fence that you're talking about. you know, asking to reconsider a Bergefell on its own merits. And Of course, one of the things that took place since O'Bergefeld was passed to today was the Dobbs decision, where finally, after 50 years, they went back and looked at Roe. and said Roe was wrongly decided.
And now they didn't put a stop to abortion. What they said is that the state cannot mandate this over. All the states. And so this now is returned to the state.
So the question is, will they do something like that about a Bergefeld? You might remember in one of the concurring opinions, not the majority opinion in the Dobbs decision, but one of the concurring opinions. Clarence Thomas spoke of specifically mentioned Obergefell as being one. That look, if we're going to go this far, and we should, that we're going to have to look at this too. Listen, I think, and then you, by the way, you get into things like precedent, what's called story decisis.
Right. In other words, you know, what what what are these kind of Precedence layout, and how do you overturn it? You have to have like. high levels of justification to do this. But here's what's interesting.
So, if you ask me, do I think they're going to pick it up? I don't think they're going to pick up both pieces. They may pick up the freedom side of one. And honestly, I don't know. Maybe they will.
You gotta have, I think, what is it? Four to pick it up and Five to win, I think is, yeah. Um so it's gonna be it and we're gonna get corrected if I just said that wrong, but I But he I'm not sure that you have. Mm-mm. the will in the court to do that.
What's interesting is this same week. I don't know, did you see this? That another number came out, the number this year of. Of a poll that has been tracking public support for same-sex marriage. And it is continuing to drop.
Now it didn't drop a whole lot from last year. In some age demographics, it was essentially the same, but it is lower than when it was decided, and it is lower. than two or three years ago. This is one of the things that is creating that civil war between the LGBTQ movement because A lot of people who are identify as gay and lesbian and obviously saw gay marriage as one of the great civil rights victories of their movement. Think that it's the trans movement and the trans activists that are ruining it now.
People don't want this anymore because they've been lumped together and they don't want to be lumped together. That's an interesting cultural side of things, but it is interesting to also that. We you know, you don't have the support, public support for same-sex marriage. That was there just Yeah. When O'Bergefell was decided, which was what 2015, I think.
Yeah. Well, and of course, we know, I mean, The Supreme Court is not taking into account what the public sentiment is, but it's impossible. They don't live in a vacuum and they're not operating outside of a question, right? Yeah. Well, let me ask you something, though.
This is what every time I read through this, I remember when Kim Davis first refused to issue this license. Because I see a categorical difference between, for example, the state coming in and saying, Kim Davis, you're a clerk of this court. You can't, when you go home, you can't post on your Facebook that you disagree with this ruling, or you can't. Attend a Bible study, or you can't be like this lawmaker in Finland who is literally facing prosecution because she posted a screenshot of Romans chapter one. Like it, I fully understand how absurd that would be.
It feels different. That doesn't mean she shouldn't have the right to do it, but I'm just working through this. It feels different to say, you have to issue these licenses because this is how the structure is set up now. Like this is the way the court decided and the way the law is set up. My gut tells me if I'm in that position, I resign my position.
Which is a big ask. I recognize that. Can you devil's advocate this for me? Like, why should Kim Davis have the right to refuse? These licenses.
And I want to be clear that I don't think she should give the license because it's. It this is a live not by lies moment, I think, to that She's basically being forced to call something marriage, which is not marriage. And so I completely respect her decision, but it is a difficult legal question. It's very difficult. And this is what I meant earlier.
And I was like, you know, if you're an agent of the state, you still have First Amendment rights, but The limits of your First Amendment rights fall in a different place. And one of the things that has been done historically through legislation and that the court has taken into account has been something Called public accommodation, right?
So One of the limits of freedom has to be where If the government has decided that this is a right, if they then cannot participate in that right, if they cannot benefit from that right. Because of your Freedom. of speech or freedom of conscience. You that's the conflict, right?
So think, for example, of um An African-American family traveling through the South trying to go visit family, participate in society like anyone else. and pull into a small town where, well, I've got a right to, you know, serve whoever I want, or I got a right to accommodate whoever I want. I got a right to sell gas to whoever I want. And I choose not.
Well, the problem is, is as if every gas station or if you go through a town and there's only one gas station You can't actually participate in it.
So you expressing your own conscience to believe that horrific thing. Then interferes with this other right that the court or the government has established. uh to participate in a free and a free society like ours. That was one of the factors that emerged in the story of Kim Davis because, how big is the The courthouse that she works at? How many clerks are there?
Is there someone? That will do it. And I think in her case, there was. And I think at that point, then the state. Should accommodate, and this is what the court has found historically: is that the state should do everything it can to accommodate the conscience rights of somebody else.
Now, there is a distinction too between a common sense religious view. And a hateful view. Like, you know, if you are not white, you don't. you know, you shouldn't participate in my society. That's a horrific thing.
But listen, the problem, and this is why I appreciate, I mean, You know, Matt Staver has been at this a really long time on behalf of Kim Davis. And Kim Davis was the very first one who stuck her neck out and took a stand on this. And she did it in a really controversial way. And I you know, I I appreciate just kind of This is the mess that the Supreme Court created. when they invented a right out of thin air that didn't exist.
Right? when they treated something that was really like gravity, marriage, as if it were a speed limit. In fact, in the Obergefell decision, you might remember, Justice Kennedy literally talked about it as if it were a social construct. The social conditions have changed, so therefore we have to get on board.
Well, what do you what do you do? You're basically imposing that. And that was his whole moral reasoning. There wasn't any moral reasoning beyond that. That of course was another difference from the civil rights movement.
The moral reasoning that built the civil rights movement from Martin Luther King was that humans are made in the image of God and dignity is inherent. That's different.
So I don't know if I've sufficiently skirted your question because it's a little bit more. No, I mean, yeah, I think it's relevant to point out, too, though, that she was not. Fired, like she's not challenging being fired by the court for not issuing the license. She is challenging a lawsuit brought by a gay person who claimed emotional damages.
So it's even different than the accommodation question, too, because that's not, they're not even alleging that she's not. She's not challenging. In this case, she's not. Oh, I thought they were.
Okay. No, they didn't claim like we couldn't access a marriage license because of Kim Davis. They're claiming emotional damages, which is a different a different question. The other interesting, I think, cultural development is as you said, this kind of civil war between the LG movement and the T Because I would posit that the reason the L and the G communities are angry with the T communities actually indicts their own reasoning here as well. Because what they're frustrated about is Ostensibly, in part, that the transgender movement essentially said gender is not a real thing, right?
Well, the legalization or the changing of the definition of marriage to include something like a same-sex pairing. is in philosophy and law making the same claim. Which is that there's the gender of like the embodied gender of two people in a relationship is. Immaterial to whether we call that thing a marriage. That's the same argument as the transgender argument.
It's being expressed very differently and much more absurdly, I think we could agree on the transgender side. And the culture was not ready for it and all those things. But the irrationality of the central claim is the same, which is why it's going to be really interesting to watch this play out because it's hard to fight the T's and maintain fidelity to the idea that gender should not matter in marriage. Yeah, I think that's, I think it is exactly the same argument. I mean, when you say that moms can be dad and dads can be mom.
You're basically saying that, and you know, that men can be women and women can be men. I mean, now, it. I think the real source of the anger is the buyer's regret because there was a welcoming into the movement early on. And you know, it it was really when It started getting really creepy. It started to affect.
Children. And you know, it always affected children, but in a much more like obscene and explicit way, for sure. No, that's right. Yeah. And I in you could still, you know.
Run under the cover of these, you know, hundreds of little studies of. Gay Health Club. members You know, who like five lesbian parents who said that they self-reported as great parents as they were just as good a parent as anyone else. And so that's kind of run the cover. Yeah, it's it's a uh You know, it's just a really Big deal.
Yeah. A right. Even if that right is illegitimate. And so when you ask, does this have a chance? That's where it just feels like.
You know, but you know what? For most of my life, that I was sentient and aware. The idea that you would roll back the so-called right to an abortion seemed at any level or putting the limits up, it seemed unthinkable.
Now. Even though that it got rolled back a little bit, it really hasn't been unseated in practice very much, right?
So, you or yeah, in the cultural imagination as well, yeah, definitely not the cultural imagination, and that's where it gets really tough. But you know, law doesn't always follow culture, sometimes culture follows law, and I think that that's the fight here. And I think there's also an increased uh uh appetite both in the social imagination and certainly on this court. For conscience and for conscientious dissent. from these sexual revolution things and that's what seemed unthinkable five or six or seven years ago.
So maybe it is a new moment. I mean, you know, I would love. For this challenge to be successful on either front and especially on both fronts.
Well, even if it isn't, I think the value of the challenge is, again, you know, chestnut checkers. Like, the shock will wear off of this challenge being brought. And it's at least entering the mainstream conversation that people don't want this. There are still a large number of Americans who disagree that you can just change the definition of something as foundational as marriage. You're right.
But the warning, and I owe this thought not to myself, but to a good friend. He and I were talking about this this week: is you might remember that there was a case that came on the tail end of Roe, a few years after Roe. Actually, more than a few years, really, what, almost 10 or 15, Casey versus Planned Parenthood. Mm-hmm. That kind of language that came out of that decision.
Immediately in the short term, cemented abortion rights to an even greater degree. uh than than Roe did. And it did it in a You know, by further establishing this invented category of rights, right?
Now, it proved. Later on, to be one of the weaknesses, That was unceded by the Dobbs decision. But that was a long time after that. And so, you know, we just, these things are so difficult to predict. That we do have a very friendly core, you know, at least.
At least of all the courts in my lifetime, this is one that might actually consider this. Are we risking getting a Casey kind of ruling here or Casey kind of precedent, which may, by the way, prove to be a weakness? 20 years from now. But between now and 20 years, you've got to deal with the aftermath.
So that's what's crazy is that. You know, this sort of court decision, this is why the court system in America, we talk about short-term and long-term thinking. You know, this is built into the American system from the very beginning, and you don't see parallels to it in many nations. like to the Supreme Court. Got an upside and it's got a downside, but it's got a long game.
It's always a long game when you're talking about the court.
Well, let's talk about this because. When we're talking about what we hope the court decides and the arguments here, we do not argue against same sex marriage primarily as Christians on the basis of scripture, let's say. We're talking about, now scripture informs our view of the world and what we believe is true. And if scripture affirms something is true, then it's going to impact our well-being greatly, whether we live as if it's true or we try to pretend it's not, right?
So all of this interplays with each other. But there was a resurgence lately from someone named Matthew Vines. And normally we don't call out people specifically by name, but he's such a well-known spokesman for this kind of theology. And I think he would be pleased to be brought up in this conversation because. He's obviously very confident in his worldview.
He is around again.
Now, people probably remember his book from several years ago called, I believe it was called God and the Gay Christian.
So he is a big proponent of this kind of, you know, what's referred to as like the side B sort of progressive Christianity, the idea that you can. can be gay and a Christian and express your homosexuality. He brought this up again recently. He was responding to a debate that Allie Bathstucke had on one of these Jubilee debates where people brought up this question to her: why are you against homosexuality and shouldn't the church embrace it for these reasons? And Matthew Vines responded on X and stirred up quite a conversation.
So, this view has not gone away. Do you find it compelling? And maybe if you could give us your kind of counterpoint. Yeah, well, I mean, it was interesting to hear something like this repeated. And what happened was in the Jubilee video, and if people don't know that format, there's one person against 20 people who, you know, disagree and they have to come and sit at the table and all that.
And the conversation about homosexuality being immoral, I think. You know, the claim Ali Bestaki was making was specifically about same-sex marriage. But somebody made the claim that the Hebrew words. In the Greek, yeah. Yeah, first of all, Hebrew, the two words in the Hebrew weren't that, you know, that there was a very specific word choice, and it doesn't refer to certain homosexual relationships, just abusive and so on.
And then also that the Greek reflected that.
Now, this has been very thoroughly refuted. It has been refuted for a long time. Thankfully, Wes Huff refuted it. That basically as an anachronistic reading of those languages. But it's an effective thing in an argument.
And it's one of those things when people kind of pick it up and then. Matthew Vines was the first really to kind of portray that kind of argument. He may not have done it exactly that way. But portray that kind of argument, that really when the Bible makes these concepts, condemnations of homosexuality. And by the way, they're really, really clear.
Or they seem really, really clear that really you just don't know this kind of hidden truth that's buried in this meaning of a Hebrew word or a Greek word.
Now, if you want the full response to that, again, Wes Huff did a terrific job. He just said, look, let me just walk through exactly what this is and what it's not. And he answered that really clear. What Ali Bestucci did, I thought, which was very helpful, and I thought she did a great job in that debate. or that Jubilee thing.
is that she didn't know the ins and outs of the Hebrew and the Greek right there, right? And well, what she knew was that this guy was just making an assertion. And that's what these things typically are. They're assertions, not arguments. They masquerade as arguments, right?
It sounds like an argument, it sounds like an argument from the Greek. But really, it's an assertion that the Greek says this, when in fact, the Greek doesn't say that. And most people are just thoroughly ill-equipped and intimidated by the topic, so they're not going to wade into that water. What she did that was really good. is to To what the Bible is explicitly clear on, which is why marriage was created in the first place.
And that it wasn't just a way of, you know, putting a and uh a stamp of approval on sincerely held affection. It actually had something to do with bodies. And it had something to do with bodies because the differences in bodies. Has something to do with children. And once you start kind of thinking that our bodies are actually legitimate and real parts of who we are, then that shapes the entire conversation.
And anything else?
So in other words, in Matthew 18, Jesus is asked about divorce, and he says when it comes to the question of divorce. That our bodies matter. If our bodies matter when it comes to the question of divorce, then our bodies probably matter when it comes to the question of whether we're married or not to begin with.
Now, that's the line of argument that you completely that this kind of Matthew Vine's approach completely went away from creation norms. And that there actually was this project that God was involved in in terms of expanding. The human race across the face of the planet, because that's what he actually wanted: be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Oh, you're alone. That's not good.
I'm going to give you a helper. Um go name all the animals. None of the animals were helpful. Another Eve wouldn't have been helpful for Eve, and another Adam wouldn't have been helpful for Adam. But Eve's really helpful for Adam, and Adam's really helpful for Eve in all kinds of things, but especially in being fruitful.
And that's the argument that Ali Bessecki pointed to: that there's a created design here. And to me, that's where all of this thing rests: does God have an intent? for how he made us and how he created the world or not. If you embrace kind of this idea that really What justifies our affections or our sexual inclinations. is the sincerity of our feelings, And completely disconnected at all from anything physical, particularly ourselves.
Then you've already lost. And I just thought that it was such a helpful thing, first of all, for. for for how she approached it. And also I was just Just imagine, like, I remember. when Matthew Vines started making some of these arguments.
And he started making assertions about the New Testament that just aren't true. and other New Testament scholars, including New Testament scholars that were pro-gay said that they were not true.
So, but a lot of people don't know that. They don't know that territory. Sure. I mean, yeah, I didn't. To a certain degree, I pity this argument because it's easy to feel angry at it because I have no doubt that it's.
Taken a lot of people off the road to truth. And that's a horrible thing to do. But I do pity the sense of like really desperately wanting to Justify.
Something, your own sin. I want to do that. You know, my sins are different, but I want to look for that justification. It's funny, I was thinking like the secular version of the Matthew Vines argument is that Seagull's episode of the radio lab that we talked about a few months ago where these secular lesbian journalists was trying so desperately to find like examples of homosexual behavior in nature and you know was just gutted that she couldn't find it and Um we we want to justify our sin and I totally I agree, like I understand, I empathize with that and I pity that. But The other thing that I, you know, I keep coming back to is again, like when we argue, for example, that the Supreme Court should reconsider this or that we don't want our country to affirm a lie about marriage, it's not.
It's not just because, although this would be sufficient, it's not just because the Bible describes marriage and says this is what it actually is. That description and the design has implications for Our lives and how it will go with us, as the Bible says. Further down the line, I was reading Proverbs 9 this morning, which says, Through wisdom your days will be many, and years will be added to your life. If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you. If you're a mocker, you alone will suffer.
And I know when I read that when I was younger, I wondered: is this a prosperity gospel type thing? I was always kind of weirded out by it. Like, it's a saying, if you're wise and you read the Bible a lot, then lots of good things will happen to you. And if you're unwise or you don't read the Bible, then bad things will happen to you. This is I read this now not at all in that way, but more as a mathematical equation.
If you live according to accepting the truth of the way God made the world, then you will naturally flourish more than if you don't. Not because you forced God's hand, but because living in line with nature will always be more harmonious to you than not living in line with it. And we see that in the effects. that our definition of marriage has on children. And that is why I feel so comfortable.
Advocating for a biblical definition of marriage because I want to protect children. And I believe if we live in a way that denies this reality. It will hurt all of us, but it will particularly hurt children because most bad ideas do. Right. I mean uh to go back to the gravity speed limit difference, right?
If you change a speed limit, um you know, you might have some consequences, you might not. But if you say that gravity means going up instead of going down and then you step off the roof, You know, Dallas Willard has this great line in his book: you can't step off the roof and then choose not to hit the ground. Like, this is another way of saying it's true. You know, it's true. And it feels redundant, it feels trite, it feels so on.
But this hit me the other day when I was teaching through. For a group, the framework that we have put out in Truth Rising, Truth Rising the study, hope, truth, identity, calling. And when we talk about truth, we are talking about that four-chapter story of the world, creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. And what I said to them is, I said, you know, the claim that I'm making here is not that creation, fall, redemption, restoration. Is the story that the Bible tells.
Although it is. It is the story that the Bible tells: that the world's created, that it's fallen, that Jesus Christ came to, you know, and died. and that uh we're headed to a new heavens and new earth. That's the story the Bible tells. What we're saying is is that This is the story of the world.
This is the story of reality. It's not just the story the Bible tells. Most people don't even get that far, right? Because we read the Bible as. Philip Yancey put it as a collection of moral McNuggets, you know, these kind of random little truths and stories and applications and principles, and all that's good, right?
Because there is the proverbs in there, right? I love proverbs. Proverbs tells you all kinds of ways not to do stupid things. It's great. But the Bible I always like that wisdom is personified as a woman, but go on.
Yeah, I'll keep going.
So, but I mean, that is. Even people have come to realize, oh, you know what? The Bible tells a story. And that story can be told in, these are the four chapters of the story of the Bible. Yes.
Uh These are the four chapters of the story of reality. These are the four chapters of the story of everyone who's ever lived. Whether they ever picked up a Bible or not, this is the same story that every single person. Is a part of. And that is what we mean by true.
Now, if there are truths, created truths, that humans are made in the image of God, and part of that means. We have bodies, and that we're alone, and that we are better together, and that God has created not just us, but. us together and created institutions around that to in ensure not just happiness, but also The future of The cosmos Now we're talking about a lot of Things that are gravity, right? And the implications are huge. But You know, sexual revolution began by saying that these moral norms are our speed limits, right?
they're not gravity. And now we've moved on to not just the moral norms. but how we actually think about the world itself. Is all speed limits. It's all speed limits, you know?
Social conditioning. We just make up what we want. You don't strike me as like a wicked guy. I actually have never seen Wicked and I don't even really know the plot. I'm so sorry in advance.
I am a wicked guy, but I don't care a thing about the wicked play.
So I don't even know. I've never even seen it. That's hilarious. Desperately wicked who can know it, is what the Bible says. Do you know what, like, the main central song of that show is?
No.
Okay, my kids asked me to turn it on because all their friends love this.
So I put the song on on the car the other day and I almost called you. The song is called Defying Gravity.
Okay. And listen to this lyric these lyrics. I mean, I think the central story is right the Wicked Witch of the West and the Wizard of Oz and how she's actually like her backstory and she's actually kind of good or something. I don't know. Listen to what she says.
I'm through accepting limits because someone says they're so.
Some things I cannot change, but until I try I'll never know. For too long I've been afraid of losing love. I guess I've lost.
Well, if that's love, it comes at much too high a cost. I'm going to defy gravity. Together we're unlimited. And I'm just like, this is. You know, again, I don't know the story, but This is the most on-the-nose, like, self-owned.
I'm like, have none of you listened to John Stone Street? You could go jump off a building, sweetie, but it's, you're gonna fall. I listen, and I'm just plagiarizing Dallas Willard, so just to be clear. Oh, man. Wow.
What a picture. Hey, John Stone Street here. This is your official invite to join us at the 2026 Colson Center National Conference. It'll be held in Knoxville, Tennessee, May 29th to the 31st. Again, Knoxville, Tennessee, May 29th to the 31st.
The theme this year is you are here. You might remember those large, now largely empty buildings called shopping malls, where you had all kinds of stores and you were trying to find the one you were looking for and you had to go to the map. And not only did you need to find the store, you needed to find that yellow arrow or the star that said you are here. Our culture today changes so fast and at such a profound civilizational level. And that, of course, is because we've abandoned the truth and we're reaping the consequences.
So a conference like this is absolutely necessary to get the lay of the land, to kind of figure out what's happening in culture and at what moment we're really in. If you've ever wondered if your faithfulness and obedience can make a difference in this civilizational moment that we're in, this is the conference for you.
So join us at the Colson Center National Conference. You'll be hearing from fantastic speakers like the one and only Oz Guinness, the remarkable story of Chloe Cole, Abdu Murray, and many more that will be announced soon. If you register before November 29th, you can receive up to 50% off tickets. For more details and secure your spot for the Colson Center National Conference, May 29th through the 31st. Go to colsonconference.org.
That's colsonconference.org.
Well, John, let's hit some of the questions that we've received lately. Recently, we shared a breakpoint commentary about. The fundamental differences between Christianity and Mormonism. We got a comment that says, Please restate your declaration to be more accurate. A more accurate statement would be Mormonism is not typical Christianity because their understanding of Christ is different.
But this person, his name is Harvey. and I assume he is a member of the LDS Church. He says My Jesus Christ gives me gives me hope for myself and for all mankind. I have received help through the atonement of Jesus that applied to my sins. and I'm a participating member of the LDS Church.
So he is asking for us to change our definition of Christianity. Yeah, well, and I think at the end of the. that's the the issue that we were trying to to put to point to Is that it is a different Jesus. It's a different God. And in a Christian view, Jesus has always been understood as God.
Um Part of the Trinity. And that view has always been seen by Mormons. Those members of the Church of Latter-day Saints to be. be wrong. uh to be an idolatrous view.
So we're talking about different Jesuses. The heart, what he says in the question, really gets to it. My Jesus is fill in the blank. And that's really what Joseph Smith did. He came up with a brand new Jesus.
It was a Jesus that was detached from human history. It was a Jesus that was detached from Holy Scripture. It was a Jesus that was detached from the Old Testament prophecies and the Old Testament appearances of Christ, for example, to Abram in Genesis. Chapter, what, 15? It was a Jesus that was different than the Jesus that was revealed.
In Jesus of Nazareth, the person that is attested to by the Gospels. who performed miracles and called himself God and gave himself the right to forgive sins and all that sort of stuff. And then actually obeyed the father all the way to death. I mean, it is a different Jesus. And one is tied to history, one is tied to holy scripture.
One is tied to tried and tested and true accounts, and the other was made up. And the one that was made up is not the same. And so I agree with this guy, but it also means that we have a different view of God, like we said, and a different view of God. Part of that different view of God is a different view specifically of Jesus Christ. There's also, by the way, a different view of.
The Father, there's a different view of the Holy Spirit. It's different, top to bottom, really. It's not the same just because we share some vocabulary words. And I would recommend to Harvey. Um to read the Bible.
And I don't mean that condescendingly at all, but I've shared before that One of the main things that Drew me to Christ was a friend in the LDS church who was inviting me to become a part of the LDS church. And I started hearing some things there that. It sounded very different from the Bible that I'd been taught as a kid.
So I started reading the Bible more closely, and particularly side by side with some of the foundational documents of the LDS church. And they are not the same. In fact, they are diametrically opposed.
So that would be my encouragement. Just read it and see what you think. The next question, John, comes from somebody challenging your take on IVF. She says: it is very common for an egg to be fertilized and then to die naturally because it's not viable. That happens often in the womb.
It's not worse when it happens outside the womb. Presumably, here she's talking about. the IVF practice of discarding embryos.
So it's not worse when it happens outside the womb, and it would be ridiculous to make a woman go through implantation when she's wanting a baby with non-viable cells.
So I think she's alluding to you suggesting that it would be a more ethical way to practice IVF if a person, for example, committed to implanting all of the created embryos through that process. I mean, there is a big difference between something happening naturally and the actual abandonment of an embryo. Or the actual elimination of an embryo. In one situation, a life is lost, in the other, Situation A life is taken. In one situation, I think from a Christian perspective, although I wouldn't make this argument if I weren't talking to someone who.
He did not have that frame of reference. But from a Christian perspective, we have every right from what we know from Holy Scripture to leave the keys of life and death in the hands of the author of life. That's God who actually claims to have that power and claims to be the one. who makes decisions and numbers our days and all kinds of things. To leave that in his hands, that's completely acceptable.
to actually approach Appropriate that quote unquote right and put that Same sort of decision making in our hands, you can't find biblical justification for that anywhere. To acknowledge that God allowed this death to happen, that's completely a biblical framework. Of the biblical framing of life and death to say, oh, I should, because God did it, therefore I should be able to choose which embryo stay. And which embryos are killed? Oh, and which embryos just go into a freezer perpetually for decades?
That is a huge, huge moral leap that cannot be justified in any sort of biblical moral framework. From a purely scientific standpoint, we are just not that good at understanding what actually. An embryo what makes an embryo viable. We get this wrong all the time. We get this wrong literally all the time.
We change the definition all the time.
Well, we do, but we actually, there are many studies when you are looking at. The success rate of implantation. that suggests that it has way less to do With the things that we're looking at in terms of viability of the embryos and the numbers game. And it has way more to do. With what's happening in the womb, in other words, the friendliness of the host, so to speak.
In other words, the knowledge we claim to have about viability and the results that come out do not line up.
So I just think that that there's just An incredible difference between those two things definitionally. There's a big difference in those two things biblically. And we're actually claiming to know things that we don't know. But that's kind of part of the hoopress of modern technology, particularly when it comes to medicine. Yeah, and I really zeroed in on the word ridiculous here.
It would be ridiculous to expect a woman to do such and such with a supposedly non-viable embryo. Setting aside the fact that, like you said, we don't really have a reliable source of. Of information that allows us to call something, call an embryo viable or unviable. What do we mean by the word ridiculous? Because women becoming pregnant and reproduction itself.
Is a natural process that we truly have very little control over. And the fact that so much heartache and unexpected loss Comes along with that territory is not ridiculous. It's the fact of the human condition as it is right now. It might feel ridiculous to us because we've assumed a level of control and expectation in this arena that we had no business assuming. And I think that's happened.
And that's why we feel comfortable using a word as weighty, as ridiculous. I mean, I've heard this argument with regards to abortion. People will say, well, people miscarry all the time, therefore. How can you expect, you know, a woman, whatever? And Man, that is taking so many leaps that we don't realize we're taking.
And that's that's really hard to stomach.
Well done, we have time probably to share just a few recommendations real quick. I'm going to share a post on Substack that I read actually a couple of months ago that really resonated. It's called, Where Art Thou, Rob Bell? This is from an account on Substack called Doctoral Discipleship. I apologize, I don't know the name of the guy who writes it, but it's written really well.
If you're like me, you remember the heyday of Rob Bell. He was for a while kind of a spokesperson of so-called progressive Christianity. I don't think he even refers to himself as a Christian anymore. He's really gone in a sort of new age, a strange avant-garde direction. But he's still around.
And I had several friends and family members that were really infatuated with him and his writing and his work at the time. And he had all these sort of compelling kind of deconstructionists. He was one of the original, I would say, deconstructors of the Christian faith. But what this post on Substack, Where Art Thou Rob Bell, and this is the person who wrote this, met Rob Bell a few times, it sounds like. What he pointed out really helpfully, I think, is the.
Central problem with the deconstruction movement, which is not the fact that people are asking questions. Or checking to make sure they really believe what they say they believe. This is a good exercise that all adults should go through. But the other side of that coin has to be: like, if you're asking, what if everything I ever believed or was taught about Christianity is wrong? which is a worth while question and should be explored.
But in order for that to be an honest question, you have to also ask on the other side of it. What if everything I believe or have been taught about Christianity is right? And unfortunately, Rob Bell never got around to asking that question, it sounds like. I hope he does. But I think a lot of people that followed him into that darkness.
refused to ask that question. This piece is really well written and I still feel sad about that whole movement. And it was kind of Sweet to read, you know, that we have brothers and sisters who started down that path, as the writer of this post said he did, and then. you know, found a deeper relationship with the Jesus of the Bible. and found his way back.
So it is possible. I just want to recommend just to finish out a conversation we started on this program. Should Christian celebrate Halloween? It's a new release on. Our YouTube channel, What Would You Say?
These are short little videos that answer very specific questions.
So it gives you a lot about the history. Of how Christians have thought about this time of year, including All Hollows Eve and All Saints' Day, and also the pagan holiday that's often said to be the thing that Christians. uh you know took uh from or capitulated to in this and Yeah, appropriate.
So, anyway, there's a lot of good historical detail. It's a great conversation piece for you to have with your kids. Should Christians Celebrate Halloween.
So that'll be my recommendation today. Awesome.
Well, if you have a question or feedback or you're angry at John, please go to breakpoint.org and click on contact us. If you fill out that information, we would love to tackle your question or feedback or anger at John on a future episode of Breakpoint this week. Otherwise, thanks so much for listening. I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street, president of the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview. We will see you all back here next week.
God bless.
