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 first Thanksgiving and the belief by many young voters that we should turn our government over to AI. Thanks for joining us this Thanksgiving week. We're so glad you're with us. Welcome to Breakpoint This Week, everyone.
I am sitting in for Maria Bear. I'm Sarah Stone Street. It is a special Thanksgiving edition of Breakpoint This Week. I'm here with my wonderful, amazing, very handsome, very attractive husband, John Stone Street. Thanks for joining me, John.
I had to pay so much money for that introduction.
So, well, no, it's good to have you on. Maria is not feeling well. Hopefully, she was able to recover in time to have a great Thanksgiving, as hopefully everybody else did as well. But we got a lot of stories to get to. Yes, we do.
Okay, you stole her line this time. Did you like that? She's going to be so proud of her. She says we have so many stories to get to. I know.
And you said it. You just couldn't help yourself.
Okay, well, let's go.
So, it is Thanksgiving week. And there's a lot about Thanksgiving that we need to remember. There's great stories. There's ones we probably don't even know about.
So shed some light on some of our stories that we should remember this Thanksgiving. I've just been thinking a lot about some things about the story, not just of Plymouth, but also Jamestown and some of the early settlements. in the United States, which of course Thanksgiving has a very specific historical precedent in Plymouth. But given the growth of interest in socialism again, as if talk about a zombie idea that should have died a long time ago, but with the election of Zoram Mamdani in New York City and kind of the numbers that we see of young people being attracted to socialism. You know, the historical track record of socialism is so bad, particularly in the 20th century, whether as attempting to kind of orient an entire society in that sort of way or to just retreat to it as the economic engine behind a communist dictatorship or whatever.
It just has never worked. And we have had uh socialist experiments In America prior to the United States, particularly in both Plymouth and in Jamestown. And so I've just been thinking a lot about that.
Well, and I feel like most people don't know that.
So, can you give a little bit more to that story?
Well, I mean, I think it's just, you know, you're trying something new. The Plymouth settlement was made up of both pilgrims and other people that were, you know, trying to have a new start and try a new economic venture. Jamestown was almost exclusively an economic venture.
So it was more, it was less a settlement and more kind of a prospect of industry. But, you know, you're in a harsh place. You're in a new place. You don't have infrastructure. And so you think the best way to do it is just expect everyone to do their best and to share what they have.
And it just doesn't work because it's not the way humans are. Humans were created to be innovative. We have the ability to not just consume the Resources of a particular plot of land or a particular area, but also to create resources through innovation and to expand opportunity and to create industry and all kinds of other things that are at the heart of thinking about what it means to be human. And so, you know, first of all, to just kind of assume that the number of people you have in your settlement or in your, you know, in whatever math you're trying to do, whether it's a nation or something small on a much, much smaller scale like this. It's just to consider them.
Oh, how do we best divide up all the food so that everyone can eat? And then. Oh, then on the other side, we're going to expect everyone to work just as hard as they possibly can, no matter how much they're going to get from it, no matter how big the reward is. That misunderstands who humans are created to be in the image of God. That also understands that humans are fallen.
And if they know they're only going to get so much, they're going to be lazy. And there was a level at which the harsh winter almost undid the Plymouth settlement. And they were preserved by. People would say the grace of God through Squanto and through the Native American. who provided that sort of assistance.
But also it was almost undone by this kind of bad idea. It just didn't work. And Jamestown was, I think, a much more dramatic example of that. Where the socialists' experiment almost, you know, led to dramatic starvation. Of course, you have other factors as well, disease and, you know, epidemics and things like that that go through.
And of course, just again, the The harsh landscape and trying to breakthrough in a new place. But I guess part of it, the reason I was thinking about it this week, it's a weird thing to be thinking about on Thanksgiving, I guess. But the part of the reason I was thinking about it is: A, there's so much talk to it, and B, there's so much like, well, it just hasn't really been tried. You know, socialism only fails because bad people tried it. And that's the point.
All of us are bad people.
So, any of us trying it in any situation is going to lead to some level of failure. It's not going to bring about kind of the encouragement and the flourishing and so on. That a level of freedom, a level of innovation, a level of self-starter and self-startership, I guess, and get reaping the the rewards of your work. understanding how we were made in God's image and what that relationship is between us and the created. order, the ability to farm and to subdue and All the words that I think you can find in Genesis chapter 1 to describe how we're supposed to relate to the created order.
So all that's there, and socialism just violates that at every single level. There's also another kind of cool aspect of the Jamestown story in particular, which also has to do with how we were made and relationships. Not necessarily socialism, but it's a pretty funny story as well.
So. It has to do with women. Women. It has to do with women. No, that's true.
So the Jamestown experiment. It's interesting. I was reading. Glenn Sunshine had a really neat historical summary on his sub stack of what are the facts of the Thanksgiving story, particularly of Plymouth. And there was some debate when the Pilgrims and others were leaving.
the Netherlands whether or not to bring women because of the safety and you know and so on. You know, the the Jamestown settlement was almost exclusively a business venture as we said before. And so at that settlement, the decision was made initially to not have women. And there's a couple of historical sources that talk about this, but... The men just got lazy.
You know, and that was the report back after. A year. That they're just hanging out, they're not doing their work. And so th the the the fear initially was that it was too dangerous. for th for women.
It was too dangerous for for wives and daughters to be there. But then it was decided that's the only way to get these dudes to work. Yeah, it's too dangerous to leave them out. Right, yeah.
So they brought him over, and then that actually ended up bringing success to that settlement. It's just a funny development. But it tells you a little bit, too, about. Right, right. Maybe God knew what he was saying when he said it's not good for.
Men to be alone. Right.
Well, and one thing I want to highlight about what you're just talking about is that we're forgetful about our history. We're forgetful about who we are as. Image bearers and our tendencies. And so this story highlights that for me. Like socialism was tried, it failed.
It failed over and over throughout all of human history, like you said. But then, Like, where did our roots come from with Thanksgiving? Like, Thanksgiving was established so that we would remember these things. We would remember our story and where we came from. And so, like, it's important to rehash these.
So, I'm glad we got to spend this time and learn probably for some of us. This is the first time we're learning that, like, socialism was tried in America at the beginning.
So, well, yeah, there's that, but you know, there's also the narrative that's been superimposed on the backside, you know, which is a reflection of the critical theory mood. of our day, which I I know I think a lot of people think that the Trump administration eliminated all that. They didn't. I mean, there are ways in which, the dominant ways in educational institutions, many educational institutions, that this story is being told. Is a story of oppression.
It's a story of disease being brought to the Native Americans and so on. And there are aspects of that story that are true, but that's not all the aspect is. You can't make the entire story. One, about oppression and the oppressed. uh particularly because of this historical account Of the very first Thanksgiving, which we are, you know, which we associate this holiday with.
Where there was assistance both ways, you know. That relationship, the friendly relationship between the settlers there in the Plymouth colony and The Indians there went on, went on for decades and was mutual. It had a lot to do with faith. It had a lot to do with God's providence. And to acknowledge that Is is important.
You can't make That's the thing about the critical theory framework is it becomes the explanation for everything. It becomes the only explanation. Everything else has to be understood through that explanation. And the oppressed oppressor narrative Isn't big enough to explain the details of that first story and then everything that came along afterwards. Mm-hmm.
But the Christian worldview, once again, is. It's big enough to hold that. It's big enough to hold that tension of. what we're grateful for. And the things that like were still fallen and able to hold that tension.
Yeah.
Well, it's a good thing to remember. I think it's a good thing to look back on this week. You know, Thanksgiving is an odd holiday for many people. It's just a kickoff of the shopping season. For others, it's just a day about football.
And food. And it's good to celebrate. I think celebration is a wonderful way to offer. Thanks, but just don't forget the thanks part, right? It's that dependency, that's the gratitude that is the core of the Christian virtues.
Because it's a reflection of the kind of I guess it's an acknowledgment. Gratitude in and of itself is an acknowledgment of the kind of creatures we are, right? Both unnecessary in the sense of first. First thing.
So, this is, you know, God is the only necessary being. In other words, the world would still be the world without any of us, but the world would not even exist without God.
So we exist because of God. We're unnecessary, He's necessary.
So that's the first inherent acknowledgement of the posture. Of thanksgiving and of gratitude. And then, when you think about the unlikeliness that this project. would succeed the amount of countries that come into existence. Get some resemblance of freedom and squander it and lose it and fade into the history in one way or another.
That certainly is a. Quite a possible future that we have as well.
So, anyway, I think gratitude is also a Christian virtue in and of itself because of what it reflects about us.
So true. Hi, friends, and listeners of Breakpoint. This is John Stone Street. You know, every single Wednesday morning, after an entire week of exchanging numerous emails about various stories of things happening in our culture, we get together as an editorial team and wrestle with the stories that we need to talk about. From what some have called a vibe shift to AI to IVF to even what's now known as assassination culture, this is a moment that is moving fast.
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Okay, we're back on breakpoint this week. And John, a new poll from Heartland Rasmussen says 41% of young voters say they'd give AI government power. Um Help with that.
Well, I, you know, yeah, it's an interesting. Suggestion, right? I mean, it's also an interesting question. Would we give up the government of ourselves to machines? You know, maybe the answer is These are voters aged 18 to 39, so they came just at the end of the Matrix movie, so they haven't really been sufficiently warned.
about how bad of an idea this is. I think, no, I think the reality is a couple of things, right? I mean, why are we open to driverless cars? Because I think most of us think, especially if you drive in Colorado more than or Florida, I'll put those two out there for more than 20 minutes, you realize that maybe artificial intelligence can do better than humans, right? You think about the lack of trust in government institutions.
You know, that's why they would, I think, maybe. Support giving and the headline is sweeping government powers.
Now, you know, exactly, you know, what that means is, you know, or what the poll, the people who are being polled understand that that means, I think, is pretty interesting. They had to do with things like AI making policy, AI determining which rights that citizens have, AI controlling the military. That was more than a third of young voters. It's an astonishing sort of thing.
Well, is it connected too with Mom Donny because it's like we're willing to try anything new?
Well, that's a good question. I mean, I do think that there's a level of frustration. I also think, by the way, there's also a level here where AI has already been given. A wide range of power. I know we kind of think of it as just kind of performing mundane tasks, but you think about the role that AI increasingly has in.
airport security, right? The joke is, is I always bring this back to TSA. But you know, it's not real people screening your bags anymore. It's machines, and they're better at it than the real people. But that's not hard to do.
Well, I mean, for 10 years, they tested the TSA's ability to find. You know, dangerous and banned items, and they failed at, I mean, sometimes 90% of the time they failed. I haven't seen the test of whether they have tested the effectiveness of these kind of smart scanning machines to actually find these things.
Now, of course, once they identify them, then it goes to a real person to search through your bag. In my own personal experience, Five out of seven times, they pull my bag, the real person looks at the screen, never even opens my bag and just hands it back to me.
So my breakpoint microphone is the problem, apparently, over and over and over and over. That I travel with.
So it's just a weird thing, but you have AI then doing that job. You have AI doing facial recognition now. It's working in tandem with someone, but that's government power. That's search and seizure. It has to do with all that.
So I think this thing reveals an awful lot of. Realities on the ground. We are a culture thoroughly used to computers doing the hard thinking and the hard work for us already. We are a culture that does not trust. Mm-hmm.
Institutions do not trust authorities, particularly government authorities. And we also have, you know, young voters who Apparently, need to read more of the science fiction, of the Gen Xers and the boomers. We were warned about all of this, right? But at the heart of everything, at the heart of everything goes back to anthropology. Do we know that what makes humans distinct?
Only when you know what it means to be human. Can you know kind of where we fit? in the hierarchy of things. We have a culture that has taught for what 150 years that there is no hierarchy to things. Matter is matter is matter is matter.
It's not created.
So basically you have things kind of coming together. There's no inherent value there. You have New Age-y in Eastern kind of religious thought, which is that the physical is not really real anyway. We have kind of our sexual worldview, which tells us that what we do with our bodies isn't really important, or what kind of bodies we have even aren't important. It's just what we feel.
So, that's kind of a Gnostic view that takes out any sort of hierarchy in the world. And then, you know, the Darwinian vision, which is matter is matter is matter is matter, and it just happened to accidentally combine into certain forms, and we happen to be the intelligent ones until we're not.
So Why wouldn't you know why if you don't have that sort of view of human exceptionalism and you don't have trust in humans as is, and by the way, humans oftentimes earn that distrust. I guess there's some level where this is shocking, and there's some level where it's not. Right.
And if you don't believe that humans have a responsibility to steward and to make. this earth something. Then that doesn't make sense. But I would love for you to walk through for our listeners is that. sphere sovereignty stuff because I think that Also impacts this.
In what way?
Well, like. without those interm you you talk a lot about how there's the intermi intermediary things like family and church and schools and things like that.
Well, you've taken all that away. Don't you think that fits in this conversation?
Well, you know, maybe. I mean, I think that more and more and more things belong to the state, and then more and more and more things are understood to be technical problems with technical solutions, or technological problems with technological solutions. And then it's failing. Right.
So one of those things kind of reflects, I think, a failure of the imagination of the sort of. maybe the loss of memory that we talked about in the last segment, especially like when you think about the Tocqueville, seeing that the really what made the American situation so unique was this flourishing of non Of the non-individualistic and the non-government parts of life, particularly American society in the middle. The institutions like family and churches, the voluntary groups, and the statement. the local government. In other words, you don't wait for the king to come.
save your uh you know, you know, solve your problems, you s solve it yourself. That's the Tocqueville thought that was really uh an incredible thing. And it was an incredible thing, and it was really unique. And it and it did kind of give the fuel for the kind of representative democracy, that that America was designed to be. And you have to have those kind of cultural realities in order to make that, I think, possible.
But that has gone away. bigger government gets, the more it wants to eat up. And the less middle there is.
So there is a lack of a middle. I think, you know, so maybe that's a pre-existing condition for this sort of thing. But there's also just that technological instinct, right? That we become technological creatures. We see problems as not being problems of if you think, you know, for example, that we're just fundamentally matter, organized matter, and that really were matter looking at matter, trying to organize matter, right?
Which is kind of how all that comes together.
Well then more advanced matter. Can do a better job than we can. You're just asking a limited number of questions. If you go back to the book on. Worldview, Making Sense of Your World, which I had the opportunity to be a co-author on the second edition.
But this language was in the first edition. I've always thought this was one of the most brilliant things that were added by Gary Phillips and Bill Brown in the worldview analysis. Is calling naturalism, the reductionistic view of everything down to just nature or matter. Just that observation that this is a limited perspective. Because we think about worldviews as those beliefs we see through, which they are.
We don't oftentimes take seriously how worldviews can be blinders, you know, like you would put on a horse so that they can't look to the side. And that's what a worldview can do. It limits our purview.
So we only see one part of it. And then to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a post-technological, materialistic, naturalistic, secular society, all problems look like they can be solved by computers. Right? I mean, that's a little bit of shorthand for what's happening, but I think that's really part of it.
And we have a reckoning with AI. We're going to give it too much credit. You're going to have a generation that's used to getting all of their answers from smartphones like this. uh don't remember a world prior to that, and they're gonna look More intelligent smartphones, I guess. For all the answers to their problems.
And we all feel like there's a lot of problems with government.
So why wouldn't we look there?
So I think maybe it's not as surprising a result. Yeah.
But good heavens, what a definitely concerning result. I mean, it's just another disappointment for why those Matrix movies got worse and worse and worse. Like the first one was great, and then they all fell apart by the end. And you're like, we really need those things now to warn young Mom Dani voters not to turn government over to Siri. Right.
So true. Hi breakpoint listeners. Time is running out to save up to 50% on registration for the 2026 Colson Center National Conference happening May 29th to 31st, 2026. Be sure to sign up before November 29th to take advantage of early bird pricing. You can secure your seat now at ColsonConference.org.
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John, new research has been done by George Barna about how Christians don't really have a Christian worldview, and especially when it comes to thoughts about after-death experiences. Yeah, it's an interesting thing.
So, the American Worldview Inventory is an ongoing project. By George Barna. at Arizona Christian University. And he's been tracking this even back when he founded the Barner Group, before the Barner Group became a separate organization and entity. But just basically saying, look, do Christians, people who claim to be born-again Christians, who have a track record of Yeah.
Church attendance, or you know, you know, that would at least identify as Christians. Do their beliefs align with that? And the answer has just been increasing, increasingly no. And, you know, we hear about this research a lot at the Coulson Center. People ask us about it.
People ask us about what's the legitimacy of this study. Surely it couldn't be that bad and so on. And listen, I think it's always important to look at methods. I think it's always important to look at things like sample size. I mean, we hear the science is settled all the time on things like same-sex parenting.
And then you look at the studies and it's not legitimate. Barn is a trustworthy source. And the American World View Inventory has developed baselines and has continued to track it. What's interesting about this. is that this kind of Points to what Christians or people who claim to be Christians think about what happens after you die.
which is becoming an increasingly important topic in a culture that is more and more interested in that topic, right?
So that's one of the things guys like Rod Dreer and others are writing about right now. Ross Dalfitt, the New York Times opinion writer, is talking about this in his new book about believing and the return to belief. You know, we talk about the quiet revival in the UK, young people coming back to church, what are they finding? Just a few weeks ago, we had some young folks over, some new believers, some intrigued. you know, by uh uh other denominations or other religious beliefs and that Question of what happens after you die came up, right?
I mean, it's not an unimportant question when it comes to worldview. In the summary of what the American World View Inventory found most recently about How Christians understand life after death. One-third of Americans who call themselves born again. Believe good people earn salvation. One third still believe in reincarnation.
Half of Americans believe they can earn their way to heaven by being generally good or doing enough good deeds. Only 39% of all adults. Just 52% of self-identified Christians expect to spend eternity in the presence of God. A minority of Gen Z said embracing Jesus as Savior is, quote, very important for the eternal outcome. or eternal destiny of the soul.
And among those calling themselves Christians, the views of the afterlife, what the afterlife consists of, residing in the presence of God, just 52%, experiencing a period of purification.
So I'm guessing that's more like the Catholic v view of purgatory, 13%. Eternal peace without the presence of any divine being, which I guess is the floating on the cloud angel view. Which is that's just 12%.
So you're always going to have outliers, right? People that have adopted beliefs, but. I think what it shows is that there's an awful lot of Muddled thinking on this, right? There's all kinds of views. People are all over the place.
And that points to something, which is where are people getting this information? And the answer is they're getting it from themselves. Like in other words These sorts of things. Even though we have this kind of return. To an interest in spiritual things, and in many cases, even a return to going to church and That's not the same thing as returning to scripture or church teaching or.
theological clarity as the authority. Right, for what we believe about these things.
So you're still going to have this kind of muddled. Worldview, or as our friend Kevin Bywater used to put it, worldview, W-H-I-R-L-E-D, that people just have a mix of beliefs. And they get whirled together. And this is why Discipleship remains kind of a central task of the church, I think. Yeah, well, and there's so many voices out there, and it's so easy to just.
you know, get your information from social media or from some s you know, somebody posting a video or whatever. But it really does. We just have to do the hard work. But also, folks, I feel like now is a great time to say that this is the importance of the Coulson Center. Because the Colson Center is a place where you can find clarity, confidence, and courage in your worldview.
And it's more important than ever right now.
So, there you go. We'll accept donations too.
Well, we do actually have a $500,000 matching grant active right now because of kind donors. But, you know, listen, that's actually what it's about. And there's the fundamental question. There's a handful of fundamental questions about Worldview. It's not just what you believe, but where do you get those beliefs?
And in other words, it's a question of authority. And a culture that has taken religious things and privatized them. Is a culture that has multiplied the understanding of authority. Who do we trust? Who do we count on?
And nine times out of ten, people are going to count on how they feel, their own experience in a culture like this. I think this is why we have seen the results on issues like abortion or euthanasia. In other words, where people are like, well, I don't really like that, but I don't want to make it illegal for everyone. I want everyone. We have this authority crisis.
And I think. If there's one thing that the American worldview inventory continues to point to is the crisis of authority. Not just what people believe, but The problem is people don't know where they should get their beliefs. as a Christian.
Well, yeah, and and there's something there too of like Christianity is true, whether we believe it or not, right? But there's a lot of Christians' understanding is like this is one of the choices instead of this is actually reality. Yeah, kind of a buffet approach. Right, right. Yeah, and that's what I meant earlier by the idea of worldview, right?
People are going to get their beliefs from a lot of different sources.
Okay, let's move on to the new report in the UK that says about a third of all babies are aborted. Yeah, it's a crazy number. It's been making the rounds. First of all, it's also revealed, including among our own editorial team. I won't name names, but I was.
the one, you know, having looked at a quick headline and didn't look at it closely, that we don't know how to do math as Americans. Because anyway, because there was one ex-poster who who who put it up and and and if you're just looking at first glance, you would think that the number is half. But it wasn't. Anyway, the whole point is: a third of babies, according to this data. In the UK, a third of all are aborted.
First of all, Just the commitment to things like quote-unquote sexual freedom. The divorce of marriage and family. from childbirth, you know, the the horrific results of the This narrative of sexual autonomy, all that's there, of course. But this is still part of the larger conversation that needs to be had in the West, which is the greatest existential threat to the Western world. And now, of course, that it's rude, it's bad ideas.
But the greatest existential threat to the Western world for the last 20 years, we've been told it's climate change. And climate change has not had any sort anywhere near The threat level that the demographic winter has, in the sense of we simply are not having. enough children. We are declining in population at astounding rates. Throughout the last probably five or six years.
You know, the news reports will pop a story about a particular nation, Norway, or Belgium, or Germany, or South Korea, or Japan. And something along what was its fertility rate, fertility rate being the average number of children per woman of age. You can't Fall below. Really, 2.1 according to the numbers, and maintain the population. You fall below 1.7, 1.6, now you're in cliff territory.
where the uh The low numbers create further low numbers, and you can't get back ahead. in terms of that. Particularly when you throw in manufactured uh gender control like we you know countries that tend to prefer boys as opposed to girls. In other words, you're just creating this nightmare of a demographic situation Where there's not enough citizens. And if you don't have enough citizens, you don't have enough workers.
You don't have enough workers. You don't have enough taxes. You don't have enough. Money to cover the social safety net that you're creating, and you're creating then a situation where, of course, we're going to look, for example, to technological solutions like artificial intelligence and robots to do all of our work while we sit around fat and happy, and then that violates who we are. Islam The birth rate is way up.
Well, it is.
Now, actually. It's way higher. The birth rate in most Islamic countries has come down pretty dramatically as well. And that's because. in those places where they have secularized.
It's interesting. You bring secularism to a community. Along with that comes a particular understanding of sex and a particular understanding of human dignity, and therefore a particular understanding of babies. And then the net result is your population drops. It's an anti-human worldview.
And it's an anti-human worldview with anti-human results. And that's that's kind of what's emerged in those nations. you see every once in a while one of these numbers from a particular nation. Pop. And it's kind of like Oh, that's how bad it is.
And this was one of those. We're uh Of all the children conceived in Britain, One third of them. are just being killed. By the way, that's not considering the numbers of excess embryos, for example, in in vitro fertilization, which would make that even worse. This is just flat out.
based on the number of abortions or medical abortions that are had. It was an aston it's an astonishing number. But more than that, it represents an unsustainable future. The chaos is the immediate loss of life, obviously. That's the worst part of it.
But you need to understand that you can't do this to a civilization and not have. long-term results on the backside. Right.
And this is why I think a lot of people saw that number and immediately posted: Britain has lost. Yeah.
that level. of dehumanization. in a nation And then think you're okay. As one person put it, Britain is in a phase of self-euthanization.
So that's devastating. This whole Idea of you know, convenience and Children and all that has crept into the church as well. And I feel like, let's talk to our listeners about. This idea of the beauty of family, the beauty of children, is not going to be caught in our civilization right now. We have to actually.
talk to our kids about the beauty of all that. Let's encourage our listeners because that's discouraging. Yes, dear. No, I will talk about that since you told me to. No, I think there have been a number of occasions.
Number of headlines, number of stories like this. Where it seems to me That the most important thing the church can do. is to help young people get married and have babies. And it has to do with saving civilization. And I know people are going to be like, no one's responsible for that.
People should just live their own lives. What? Where do you get that idea? Genesis 2 tells you that we're responsible for all that, and people don't just live their own lives. Or people will say, Well, you shouldn't tell people, you know, how to, or the church makes an idol of marriage.
I'm like, really? The church makes them out of marriage. Maybe the church doesn't do a great job figuring out how to How to include singles, I get that. But please take me to the church that's made an idol of marriage. You know, I'd love to see this up close and personal and what that looks like.
The fact that you say that marriage is a normative experience of human beings that God created in his image, because God's plan for us is not just to go to heaven, but to be image bearers here and to take care of the creation that he created and loves and is going to restore. Like all of that vision for the Christian life is big. And that is the thing that most people have lost. It's the greatest example of. disconnection from who they are, the identity crisis.
And I think that it's it's seen in what Charlie Kirk called the Lost Boys of the West. I think it's seen in young women who Seem to be less interested in marriage and family than young men are, according to many surveys. And I think that's probably true, at least in certain parts of the country. And we've lost the the sense that Marriage and babies. Right.
Good. To your point. If we don't teach this explicitly, Not just the sexual ethics of don't have sex until you're married. But this is what marriage is for. This is what sexuality is for.
This is how God designed it. And by the way, it's good. And it's good within this context. And it's good for this person. purpose.
It's not just that they're not going to get that from other sources. It's that what they're going to get from other sources. is in antinatalism. Said children are bad. is that marriage is a an impediment to human happiness.
Imagine you saw two more articles this morning. about the young women who are basically just quietly quitting their own marriages. But they but the economic pressures are too great for them to get divorced.
So they're just quietly quitting. And celebrating this as a kind of a show of self-authority, yeah, of authenticity and self-expression. This is devastating. It's devastating for the overall happiness. Because you are happy.
I am so happy. You're so happy. You're welcome. I have been blessed. But actually, the surveys tell, like, it's I have real problems with the happiness studies that.
Everyone seems fascinated by it. But I think they're also really interesting. Like, I think the questions you ask are really important on this. I think Arthur Brooks does a great job. at um uh at Harvard.
The happiest people on the planet, according to surveys, are middle-aged. Religious Married women with children. It's me. It's you. I'm so happy.
I'm so happy. Yeah, it's not just me that's happy. We're happy. We are so happy. All right.
Okay. It wasn't it, just to close this out, wasn't it G.K. Chesterton who said the most extraordinary thing is an ordinary woman, ordinary man. ordinary woman and an ordinary man. Raising ordinary kids or something along those lines.
It sounds like Chesterton. Yeah, we'll just say that. You can look it up. I'm sure I quoted something wrong there. It's important to note, too.
I mean, we're just, again, this is just the latest number. of a single country. One that matters. Right? Because it was the home.
in many ways the center of the Western world. For a long time, it was the source of The religiosity of America, you know, from the first great awakening and the and so on. And it's also clearly less religious, right?
So being less religious. Has consequences of understanding less who God made you to be and how you should relate to others, and these sacred things about. how God made us. But this is just the UK. Look, every Western nation is in demographic decline, and every Western nation is in big trouble.
Some are even in bigger trouble than the UK. And when I first started looking at this, which was probably 15, almost 20 years ago. Literally looking at the demographic rate, I somehow came across these numbers and like, why is no one talking about this? And they've just gotten worse and worse. The U.S.
has gotten worse and worse. Because when I was first looking at it, the U.S. was meeting the minimum of replacement. They really weren't, but they were according to the UN, right? The UN had a low number.
They rounded up.
Okay, fine. We're not anywhere in the ballpark. We're now down in the middle of the pack in Western nations. We've fallen below, in many ways, European nations. And not all of them, but in a handful of them, particularly those it's interesting, those nations that are getting more religious, you're seeing an uptick in that.
So we'll see if part of the quote unquote Charlie Kirk effect or the the great quiet revival in the UK does any sort of reversal, but These are real numbers, and none of people are talking about it. Yeah.
We have several listeners who wrote in with some questions, so I want to make sure we get to those. To start with, a listener says, I don't always feel celebrated as a public school teacher in the Breakpoint commentary.
So let's address that. Yeah.
Well, you know, we've been writing a lot about education. We've been writing a lot about and thinking and speaking a lot about education. The opportunity for Christian education right now. And by that, we're talking about a structure of state-run education, which I think has largely failed, it has been considered the status quo. Uh, there's a great level of dissatisfaction, and to some degree, I actually want to feed that because I think the reality on the ground.
You know, really is a problem. I really do. I think that. By and large the system is set up, To separate kids from their parents, to not understand the purpose of learning. and to initially and eventually lead people away from who God really created them to be.
Now That does not mean, and I have said it in the past, but I don't say it enough. that God doesn't have wonderful believers in the public school system. Who are actively trying to be redemptive agents with individual lives. And I see their work kind of as the people who go into war-torn areas and try to rescue. You know?
Victims. You know, it's one thing to say we should pull our own kids out of. State-run schools, if at all possible. It's another thing to say: if we're not able to do that, then there's an additional level of responsibility, which I think Christian parents have. But that's not the same thing as saying that um adults, many adults are called to go in and can be salt and light there.
And they need to be salt and light there.
Now, I think some people will scoff and say, well, they can't be because they're stuck by the. No, I've met an incredible number of public school teachers who love Jesus and who do things differently. They have figured out how to point people to Christ. They have figured out how to help students learn. They have figured out how to help students that are in crisis families or crisis situations.
Some of them are coaches, some of them are teachers.
Some of them are administrators.
Some of them have the luxury of being protected. In kind of regions of the country where you don't have the state. barreling down, you know, there's a difference. between you know the way schools are managed and controlled in some rural parts of the South, for example. and how they are here in Colorado, where there's just an oppressive state that continues to force things down and continue to try to reclaim the ground that the state lost in education here.
California is worse. Massachusetts is worse. I mean, we can name all these things.
So I do want to affirm that it is a sacred and wonderful calling. for Christians who have been called into those arenas. It was interesting. I didn't include this, and it's fun. I wanted to make sure to address this because I want.
public school teachers who are followers of Christ to know A. I believe it's a calling, but I think Christianity describes going into some of these difficult areas as a calling. But also to say you can't do it the same way everybody else does it. I mean, to live out your calling as a Christian means. as a public school teacher, you got to do it differently.
Right.
But it was interesting. We got... Another handful of comments from Public school teachers who said, everything you say about the public school is exactly right. You know, it's as bad. In fact, it's worse.
And let me give you three examples. And, you know, that was one thing.
So I don't want to, you know, I didn't want to bring that up, you know, and go into it in depth. because I don't want to undermine the calling, but it is important. The worldview crisis, the worldview battle is alive and well. Yeah.
And and education. And we want to hear from you listeners, thanks for writing in. We want to hear how we can support you in that because you shouldn't do it alone either. And we You know, that's kind of what we do: come up with resources for so that you can live with. Clarity, confidence, and courage, right?
But seriously, we do want to hear from you. Let us know what you're wrestling with and how we can help. All right, the next listener wrote in and said: This misrepresents what the CAST report said. Everyone should read it for themselves. The CAST report recommends caution, it recommends holistic treatment, it recommends a team approach, it recommends further study.
These are all good common sense recommendations that anyone would make. I feel like maybe we should say recommendations a couple more times. No, we got this comment, by the way, in response to a commentary, a breakpoint commentary on a A second report put out by the Department of Health and Human Services about so-called transgender treatments. And I didn't understand the question or the comment that we misrepresented what the CASA report said.
So I'm going to read exactly what I said about this. Second, transgender ideology was sold to us as science, a lie that has now fully collapsed. Then we go on to talk about how this collapse started. or how the collapse happened. Started with last year.
The CAS report out of the UK declared that medical treatment for gender therapy was built on shaky foundations. That's a quote, because that's what the cash report said. The CAS report did not fully say that this needs to stop. The HHS report did. And the second HHS report, which Is what created the cause for this.
And there's a whole lot of other medical organizations that did. And not only that, but then in the meantime, we found out the WPATH was a completely made-up, fabricated, self-appointed experts that really didn't have any sort of medical. Foundation for all the claims that they were making. They were making it on the grounds that they were medical experts about these things, to which they weren't.
So the whole thing was built on shaky foundations. The CAS report merely pointed that direction. The CAST report was also the very first one from a government-sponsored study. To do anything less than fully affirm the heck out of these. treatments.
that included puberty blockers, hormone therapy. quote-unquote therapy even um surgical intervention of some kind. amputation of breast or, you know, whatever.
So what we said is the CAS report declared that medical treatment for gender therapy was built on shaky foundations. The comment that came in, it was just an odd, said that That misrepresented what the CAS report said. It doesn't. That's exactly what the CAS report said. Since then, a whole lot more things have said way more than the CAS report said, which is what we said in the commentary.
And now the best science tells us that there's no medical legitimacy whatsoever. Especially when it comes to minors. to halting puberty. Because The medical experts say that The vast majority of kids in puberty will resolve with their bodies. It tells us that the treatments, quote unquote treatments, have permanent.
Damage. that are caused, and certainly the surgical interventions do. And that there's not Uh medical. backing to say that this is what we should do with kids who experience gender dysphoria. Understand.
The CAS report was the first one. To push back and say, we ought not immediately do this to every single kid who questions that they were born into the wrong body. They were putting brakes on what the Tavistock clinic. was the first one to realize like we are basically rushing these kids. Through this stuff.
Without medical backing for what we're doing, it was a social experiment. The CAS report acknowledged that. That you're right, that it didn't call for, it did recommend caution. That's the point. It recommended caution for the first time because everyone else was saying hit the gas, and there was no reason to do that.
So I don't think we misrepresented it at all. What this particular person is asking. On the same topic, why do you use a dog whistle term and imply being trans is some sort of ideology when it's not? Why use made-up terms? You know, I just saw this part of the question from a listener, and it was about the same thing.
And I just thought, what a. What does that mean, a dog whistle term, imply being trans is some sort of ideology? And then why use made-up terms?
So it seems to me like this question is coming from someone who thinks that the transgender Ism reflects reality of who people really are, and it shouldn't be dismissed as if it's an ideology.
So it seems to come from somebody who's advocating for transgender identity.
So I want to go in reverse order of the two questions that are asked. The first question was, why use made-up terms? Movement. In our lifetime, that has made up more terms than the transgender movement. We have a word called cisgender.
Cisgender means those who continue to identify with the sex to which they were assigned at birth. That's the official definition. In the definition of this made up term is another made up idea, that sex is assigned at birth. As if it's just based on the whims of a doctor who's like, hmm, what should this one be? Let's flip a coin.
Cisgender refers to. The vast majority of people who have ever lived in the history of the world. And then there are those who aren't, just kind of like the vast majority of the people who lived in the history of the world have. Two arms and two legs. There are, of course, children born without arms and without legs.
We don't have a word for those who are born with two arms and two legs. Because that is the norm, that is the natural, that is the way humans are. And because we know the way humans are, then we can actually identify a disability. A loss of some kind of a function, an ability, a limb, an organ, or something like that. But it's because we have an understanding of the whole.
Cisgender is a completely m made up and unnecessary word. And there's about six others that we could look to. preferred pronouns, you know. Which and I I thought Neil Ferguson and the Truth Rising films did a great job. He said it's just what a weird social innovation to announce your pronouns at the beginning of a meeting.
And so on.
So I just thought that was an interesting thing. It's like there's never been more made-up terms from any source in the history of the world than those who are advancing. transgender ideology. And it is an ideology. It's an ideology with a very clear history.
To say that it's an ideology is not an insult. To say that it's an ideology is not to make something up. To say that it's an ideology is not to Say that there are not individuals, real people who struggle with gender dysphoria or who think that they were born into the wrong body. Ideology says that those people who were born into the wrong body are always right. They're never wrong.
ideology Is How we got to the point where we said that if a four-year-old says, Mommy, I'm a boy. not a girl, then we should immediately start this protocol to take a four-year-old and trust The voice inside her head, To take her into this direction away from her body, which will involve amputation of healthy body parts and stopping puberty. And in other words, violating natural and normal development, which goes back to the invention of terms, because the only reason you invent terms. Is to undermine the sense that there is a natural and there is a normal and that both are equal options that we can actually take. That's an ideological position.
So it's not an insult to say that. It's uh it it's it's just pointing out what it is, you know? Our ideologies are ways that we attempt to Explain the reality that we see. Which is why some that some ideologies are really wrong.
Some ideologies. Prevent us. from seeing reality. And there's not been a better example in the last 20 years of an ideology that has prevented. an entire group of people.
from either recognizing reality? or pointing out that they recognize reality. than transgenderism. It is an ism. There's a heritage to this ideology.
There's a current. State of this ideology. There are adherents of this ideology. There are those who punish anyone who dissents from the ideology. To say that it's not an ideology is.
is just honestly silly. and people are victims of ideologies. The worse the ideology is, the further it takes us from reality, the more the victims are. Yeah, there are real people who struggle with trans identity. They're the victims of the trans ideology.
Nobody's m that that's a. That's a term that is describing what's there, as opposed to a term like cisgender, which comes from. transgender ideology. Which describes makeup terms. Yeah.
All right.
Time for recommendations. You want to go first? You want me to go first? Or do you want me to go first? I'll go first.
Okay. I want to recommend, and I did this a couple weeks ago, but you sent out an announcement, put it on Facebook that we are bringing the Strong Women podcast, at least for now, to an end. It has had a good run. How many years? Five and a half.
Well, five and a half.
So how many shows? How many programs? 357. There are 357 interviews with strong women.
Well, some of them are men who talk about strong women. Yeah.
But the point is, is that these are wonderful, wonderful things. And it's been cool to get on Facebook and after you made the announcement to see. The raving fans post comments about what it meant to them and and how the conversations have encouraged them. It has been a frequent occurrence for me to show up and speak somewhere. And somebody go, Is Sarah here?
I want to see her. And they didn't care that I was there at all. because they were fans of the program. And so, you know, I wanted to give you a chance to say something about that. But also just to acknowledge that these things aren't disappearing and they're really wonderful interviews.
You're a great interviewer, as people have just experienced. then this has been a a wonderful resource.
Well, thank you. Yeah, I have had the best time. I've learned so much. And I'm really thankful that I got to do it. And, um And I'm thankful for all the listeners.
I'm really thankful to the Colson Center because They made it possible and I'm glad that they'll be out there forever. at least for the foreseeable future. But I have a different recommendation. Can I? You may go for it.
Okay. I was thinking about our conversation about. Talking to our kids about the beauty of family and the beauty of marriage, the beauty of children. And so here's my recommendation. Find some old people.
Get to know them. Have your kids get to know them. Ask them questions, talk about the way they love each other. it's messy because we're messy, but That's also part of the beauty and help your kids learn to observe and Watch those families around you that are in the next season. Learn from them and surround your kids with marriages that Are fundamentally at the heart the same, you know, loving Jesus and being committed to each other, but that play themselves out differently because I think that helps them see that.
we're all unique and that that marriage can look different in the way it's expressed, but fundamentally you know It's grounded on something. bigger.
So that's my recommendation. Good one. Mm-hmm. Well, that's all the time we have. John, I know you could talk to me all day long, as I could you.
I do talk to you all day long. Yes, you do, and I'm so thankful for that. But, listeners, thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next week.
