You're listening to Breakpoint This Week, where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian perspective. Today we're going to talk about a controversy at the University of Oklahoma over a student essay asserting a biblical view of gender. We're also going to talk about a return to paganism in Europe, and Australia is outlawing social media for minors. 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 Colson Center. Hoping you all are having a lovely December. John, I want to start this week with a story out of Oklahoma.
This has been making the rounds in local news and national news at this point. The University of Oklahoma has placed a professor on leave. After a controversy involving alleged viewpoint discrimination, basically what happened is they assigned an essay. This lecturer to, I believe it was university juniors, to write about. gender stereotypes.
And a student wrote about A biblical case for the gender binary. and the professor gave the student a zero. And the student has pushed back.
So this has all been made public at this point. The professor basically said, your stance, you did not cite empirical evidence, and it was very offensive. Um because she basically said the Bible says there's men and women.
So this is, it feels at a glance like a local kind of dust up. But I think this has legs in terms of it being a cultural story. What do you make of this?
Well, I mean, you know, I saw the whole thing, and it's been an issue for a while where Christian views have been discriminated against. But. I also would say that it is not enough on a college assignment to say, well, this is my belief, and the Bible says so. I think you can argue from the Bible as a legitimate source because it is, but then to do a college-level work, you need to actually make an argument, not just kind of an appeal. To its authority in a situation where that authority is not respected.
Now, hear me, I think the Bible has lots of authority. But in this case, the problem was the assignment itself. The assignment didn't require any. The assignment literally asked. For the students' opinions.
I mean, that's what the assignment was about, to the best that I can, that I've seen kind of what the classroom instructions for this particular. Assignment, you know, were. It's incredible that this is what college assignments are.
Now, if this were just one of many assignments, but that's not the case in many classrooms. And so half of the story is not just about this. I think it's interesting that there were some. that this is a pushback that maybe we wouldn't have seen three or four or five years ago gain any traction, gain any legs. The university has acted out on behalf of the student, recognizing that the claims to discrimination We're there.
But how is this college level work? I guess is my point. How is it college to say? Or to ask students, what do you feel about this? I mean, that's not what.
Academics should be. That's not what argument should be.
Now, I'll say that this entire movement. Against the gender binary has never had scholarly or academic support. It's been a bunch of scholars citing each other saying, This is what I think about it. Actually, I think it's not even that. It's this is what I want to be true.
And we've all agreed. I mean, that was the whole WPATH organization.
So I guess what I'm going back to is that. The corruption of science and the corruption of academics and the statements of what Rudrick Kipling called just so stories. You know, this is this is what it is just because it's so.
So that's what I was really, I was really, you know, kind of stunned about in the whole thing. I'm actually going to disagree with you. I think it is an absolutely worthwhile academic exercise to like present students with an article and then say, Um respond to it. Especially by that like I don't I don't think a fourth grader should be doing that. But by the time you get to college, it is absolutely a skill to build an argument or a reaction to something and to be able to express it.
Her complaint is legitimate because of the assignment. There were three criteria. This is. sided of what You you have 25 total points on the assignment. It's made up of these three things.
Basically, does the paper show a clear tie-in to the assigned article? I think that's a bizarre criteria. What's a tie-in? What does that even mean?
Okay, I know. And it's like, so basically, you're saying, like, you'll get credit as long as you don't trint in a paper that's about something wildly uncomfortable. It's about dump trucks. Right. Yeah.
I mean, it's a tie-in, that's not even a legitimate way to describe it in an assignment. It doesn't ask for sources. It doesn't require sources. It says have a thoughtful reaction or response. But what's thoughtful?
In this little ecosystem of gender ideology, thoughtful means you have agreed, you know, and that's the rules that everybody played by until just recently.
So good for her for pushing back on this. And is the paper clearly written? You might have an argument there. I haven't actually read the paper and say, but I don't think that that's. At least from her own account, she's received strong grades for her writing in the past.
So I think this might have to do with kind of the overall state of writing. My point is, this isn't a college assignment. It's not legitimate to ask college students. Their thoughts. I mean, as a major assignment, no, as maybe a small assignment, or let me see where my students are, and that sort of stuff.
But here's the point. Here's the point. People are not their own sources. And one of the dramatic confusions in today's culture is that an assertion equals an argument. Because I think this, because I believe this, because I feel this, therefore that counts as an argument.
And that's literally now what this assignment is requesting. I think the distinction I'm making is between. I agree. I don't want to send the message to college students or anybody that your thoughts are of premium importance and I need to know them. By her grading, it seems like she was grading the first thing.
Like, do I like your thoughts? Oh, completely. No, I don't. Yeah. I mean, listen, the statement, and I think the.
The teaching assistant that got in trouble on this, and then the professor finally did as well. I think. identified as LGBTQ, if I if I remember right from the article.
So of course, of course they she did. I mean, it all sounds like a situation where the professor was like, I want these kids to read this article. How can I make it part of my curriculum? All of my criticism of the writing aside, I am glad that this student pushed back and that it's getting attention because I have no doubt things like this are happening literally every day.
Okay, well, let's move on. There's another couple of stories I want to hit you with this morning. This one is an interesting look at uh the changing religious landscape as ever in the United Kingdom.
So this is from the Christian Post. It says, there's a rising number of Brits who are leaving Christianity and turning to paganism. Which is surprising. I think if you're following the demographic changes underway in Europe, you might think: okay, if people are leaving Christianity, are they turning to Islam? But this is making the case that they're turning to paganism.
Is this real?
Well, there's a lot of religious shifts happening in the West right now. I think people becoming far more open. To religion, to the supernatural. I think based on actually what the article itself was pointing to and the sources that it was pointing to, the headline is just misleading. People aren't leaving Christianity to turn to paganism in England.
People are turning to Christianity. People aren't turning from Christianity because people don't start as I mean, the number of people who are Christian are so dramatically small. And really, what this study was pointing to was not a turn from Christianity to anything else. It was basically changing religious beliefs.
So you can't assume in England that the baseline is Christian in the same way that you can, you know, like in central Arkansas or something like that. You know, whether you're talking cultural Christianity or, you know, inherited, you know, from grandma Christianity. In England, what we're talking about though, yes, is something that I think we're seeing in across the West. Which is an openness to religious belief, spirituality, and it's not always. Orthodoxy.
You have liberal Christianity in the States and in England. which in many ways is indistinguishable from paganism. You know, talking about believing in Mother Nature and looking inside for your own true divinity and not needing forgiveness and all other kinds of central tenets. If you believe that the central tenets of religion are what you believe about God, what you believe about self, what you believe about sin, or what's wrong with the world, and what you believe is the solution, you know, to the problem. the Episcopal Church, liberal Methodism in America, these are indistinguishable from paganism.
They might not have the creepy clothes, although some of them do have pretty creepy vestments that they you know show up with in the pulpit. And I think the same thing is true in England, but I also think there's less of a hold. of traditional you know Kind of the title Christianity there, right? I mean, I had this conversation. a few months ago with Justin Brierly, who's probably been marking What's been called the quiet revival, at least in story and at least in Podcast, his new book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, is a really interesting account of this kind of religious movement in the UK.
And He talked about how one big difference between the US and the UK is, you know, we've just come out of this time we were talking so much about deconstruction. In the United States, where people had a bad experience growing up, you know, in Their youth groups, or whatever, may be legitimate, maybe illegitimate. And what I mean by that is maybe they really did have a bad experience, or, you know, maybe the youth pastor, you know, read-I kissed Aiden goodbye, and they didn't like that. And so they walked away. And so they have complaints about He's a be you know, in the UK young people don't have complaints about Youth group because they didn't go.
I mean, you know, this the quiet revival is a jump to like 20, which is enormous. Because that's like five times where it started. When you start at 4%, the jump to 20% is. What they call statistically significant. We have talked about here, for example, young men returning to church.
We've also seen and young men going to, you know, what's called graperism. Young men being attractive to some kind of Nietzschean nihilistic Anti-Semitic, whatever, or young men even being attracted to other things that are broken and wrong. I I think we would expect the same thing over here. It all goes back to something that G.K. Chesterton said, which almost everything in life goes back to something that G.K.
Chesterton said. He's like, when you stop believing in God, the problem isn't that you. believe in nothing is that you believe in anything. It may take a while for that to work itself out, but you start looking for love. You start looking for truth.
You start looking for meaning. And that's going to take you. all kinds of places. Add in there a good dose of mistrust. of institutions and authorities, and who knows where you're going to end up.
In the search for meaning. John, if you had a friend who deeply admired G.K. Chesterton, But had never gotten around to actually reading anything by Chesterton. Is there a name for so-called friend? No, this is a very hypothetical person.
Where would you advise them to start? Oh, well, if I knew this person were a parent, a mother or a father with little kids. And it was Christmas time. Not that I'm, you know, you know, reading the tea leaves here, speaking of paganism. No, I would actually start with Letters from Father Christmas, which is a great Christmas reading.
Oh. There you go. You can do that. Very good. I'll pass that along.
Whoever this person is can do that. Yeah, I'll pass it along. There we go. And then go to Orthodoxy.
Okay. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with more breakpoints this week. Hi, friends, and listeners of Breakpoint. This is John Stone Street.
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So please make your gift today at colsoncenter.org slash December. That's colsoncenter.org/slash December. We're back on Breakpoint this week. John, I want to talk with you about hell specifically, but before we get to that, There's one other headline I just want to hit quickly with you because I think this is a big development. The nation of Australia has officially banned social media for users under 16.
And not only have they banned it, but they have put penalties in place that are so astronomical on companies who do not do their due diligence to verify that their users are 16 or older. That I think this might actually work. I mean, it's tens of thousands of dollars per fine, basically, if you're found as a social media company to have users under 16. This feels, again, like a big move. Jonathan Haidt obviously is praising it and has done a lot to push for this kind of thing.
I'm very, very hopeful that this movement will move over here as well to the U.S. What do you think about this? I think it's enormous. I think one of the reasons. It's such a big uh interesting experiment is because of the penalties, Right.
In other words, if you really believe that it's bad, for young people to access this content or this platform. then you have to do something significant. And penalize the right players. I mean, in a sense, it's like how you deal with prostitution. You don't penalize the girls.
You penalize the Johns, right? You penalize the pimps. That's who you go after. And think about this compared to the feeble, sad little, pathetic attempts. to keep miners off pornography websites, right?
The attempt there was, oh, yeah, you're a porn company. You need to be just for people of age.
So put an age gate there.
Well, an age gate, it's kind of like you want to keep people out of a property and you put a gate up with the latch on the outside, you know, that's low enough for little kids to reach, right? I mean, that's age gate is basically where a user goes and testifies. or claims their own age with no double checking, no verification, no anything. And of course they can get exactly to where they want to go. It was interesting.
I was asked about this on the World and Everything In It podcast. And They had dug up some comments, I guess, from local Australian media of teenagers going, Well, we'll get around this.
Well, maybe, but if social media platforms themselves are responsible about whether they get on their property, so you know, so to speak, it's going to be a little bit harder than just an age gate. And I think that you got to have bite on that.
So, I do appreciate that on a policy level.
Now, the response is going to be similar to the response when David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the UK several years ago tried to get serious about keeping young people off pornography websites. And everyone cried free speech, free speech, free speech, right? Everyone cried out government overreach, government overreach. I always think it's. Really interesting in the UK and in Australia when they cry that.
I mean, Australia was completely a free nation until COVID. And then unexpectedly, the lockdowns and the police stayed and the arresting people on beaches, walking the dogs by themselves. I mean, it was It was fascinating. I mean, I think the outskirts of Australia was pretty different than Sydney, Brisbane, and all that, but. Anyway, that's another story for another time.
But I think that you'll get that same complaint. I think you'll get the same. uh you know um movement And at one level, it's not going to work this time. And it's not going to work because. The harms of social media to young people, especially to young girls, is so overwhelmingly obvious, it's undeniable.
Now, the counter would be, well, obviously, that's the case with pornography websites as well. Cameron tried his push after several high-profile examples. of teenage girls being abused or self-harming because of being exploited on some of these sites and, you know, through through some s through you know, through the the scourge of pornography. Maybe it was a little bit different because you had to trace the source. Like, you know, this is what corrupted these teenage boys thinking, and this is what they did to the girl.
It's a pretty easy straight line to draw, but maybe that was the challenge. But now you have actually a government acting out saying, This ain't going to happen, you know? And At one level It reflects to those who are complaining about this is a loss of freedom. The answer is yes, it is a loss of freedom. And this is the conscience or the constable.
are uh argument that Chuck Colson often pointed to. He didn't it didn't originate with him, but I I thought he was one of the ones who who made it super, super clear. You either govern yourself or you have to be governed. Edmund Burke put it this way. He said, It is in the constitution of things, basically, the way the world is.
that intemperate men cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters, is what he said. And Oz Guinness calls this disordered freedom or the irony.
so to speak, of freedom, the problem of freedom is when you get freedom. And that freedom then becomes freedom from constraint. Rules, responsibility, accountability, in our case, reality, freedom from. Instead of freedom four, then you don't have any. boundaries of freedom.
But all the freedoms we have in the United States, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, there have to be limits to it. Because if it's unlimited, then it becomes a source of self-prison, of self-slavery, of self-tyranny. And if people can't govern themselves, they have to be governed from the outside. I have this conversation with my son all the time. You know, 'cause he's an eight-year-old boy and eight-year-old boys sometimes lose control.
And they get crazy and silly, and so on. And a lot of times it's a lot of fun, but sometimes it's like this is not the time or the place. You have to be under control. If you're not under control, something has to control you. It's true of my eight-year-old son.
It is true of societies. We've got a commentary that we're working on in-house here with. one of our uh editors and writers. About parents outsourcing their responsibility, like sending their kids to camp so that the camp can detox them from their phones. It's like, take the phone away, you know?
Don't give them a phone when they're eight, sort of thing, right? If parents don't play those roles. In kids' lives, then other people have to step in. If kids. quote unquote freedom to be in digital space is out of control, which everyone now agrees almost that it is, then you have to govern it from the outside.
So I think this is an appropriate step for a government to take. And not just because I don't like what phones are doing. It's in the over, which I don't. I mean, that's a reason enough. But if people aren't governing themselves, if kids aren't being, you know, led by their parents in this space, then you have to take.
The mental health damage, the damage to future citizen, governments are always interested in kids and the well-being of children because children become adults. What kind of adults are they going to become? And so all this plays into the fact this was a bold step, it's a big step. We'll see if the penalties are enough. to make a big difference.
It'll be interesting to have kind of the The deep six is on this, and five years or three years to see what kind of result this. These policies have. We'll see if maybe country maybe some of these companies will just pull out of the nation of Australia. They just won't offer it, you know?
Well, like the, you know, there's porn companies or porn websites that have pulled out of states in the US that have done similar things with those websites in the state. Um, I feel like the freedom argument in this case would be more compelling if there was a plausible like value add. of things like social media for young kids. It would be a slightly different equation if it were like this is actually a good and beneficial thing when used well, and it's just negative when it's abused. Then maybe the whole freedom and restriction argument would be more compelling.
That is not the case here. It's like cigarettes, it's more like cigarettes than it is dislike cigarettes. There is no demonstrable value add. to using social media when you're a young person. I mean, you could, I'm sure people could tell me.
I, my, my kid, you know, found access to this great article or something like that. This, you know, but the, I'm saying, like you said. The risks so far and so profoundly outweigh. Any individual, you know, happy accident of something enjoyable that happens on social media, that it's, it's just completely not worth it for any individual person. Even if you feel like your kid has, you know, command of their self-control and whatever else it is, it's, and it, and I really appreciate the distinction that John Haidt makes here because it's not just the content, it's not just bullying or pornography that makes its way through and we know is predatory, especially on social media.
It is also the things themselves. I just saw another study this week about what this technology has done to our attention spans and how long it takes to rebuild the capacity to actually focus and hold attention once you've been using these things for this long. And the infinite scrolling and the dopamine timing and all that stuff with social media, you could be looking at nothing but encouraging and uplifting content. It's still messing with your brain. And for young kids whose brains are developing, we owe them.
Yeah. Guardrails. Yeah. Well, yeah, you're right. And it's not just that there's no benefits.
The harms are there's nothing more harmful to teenagers right now than this. Like if you were to just add a now listen, in the hands of different teenagers, it wouldn't be so bad, right? In other words, if they're We're a group of teenagers where parents are helping them moderate, who have developed a sense of discipline and so on. And I think, for example, of some teenagers that I know that have made the choice themselves to get off these platforms, right? The platforms no longer tempt them.
Because they saw how what it was doing to their friends, what it was doing to their own hearts and minds. And that's self-regulation. That's the idea of self. And I don't think the freedom arguments from critics here are that sophisticated. It's just in general, like the government doesn't belong here.
And they're right. The government doesn't belong here unless No one else is is regulating if unless self you know, people aren't regulating themselves and so on. There is an irony on the attention span thing that's worth talking about. We haven't really addressed this. there there is a pushback on that attention span.
Not specifically for teenagers, because teenagers still struggle with that and it does have the negative response, but I think it has to do. with people who just are are frustrated. And then turned around. I mean, you think about the most popular content online now being like two or three hour podcast. That's an interesting thing, right?
Where we were worried that people couldn't think in more than 140 characters. We blanked. Woke up and suddenly young men are listening to three hours worth of content.
Well, sure, but they're doing 12 other things while they're listening. This could be true. Although the ability I mean, a lot of them are able to articulate pretty clearly what they heard. I mean, not everyone, you know. I think it also has to do with drive times and workout times.
In other words, there's a selective nature of this. And there are apps that are really helpful, you know, GPSs and so on. A lot of parents, you know, make the argument that I want my kid to have a phone because I want. The, you know, I need to be able to get in touch. There's school violence, all that other stuff.
I, A, your kid doesn't need to have that kind of phone. B, your kid doesn't need to have all those apps in order to have, you know. A texting function. But I think also to your point, You know, Christopher Heid, Claire Morrell, who's I think done wonderful work on this from a parenting And two parents who's going to be at our Colson Center National Conference, which, by the way, is almost sold out.
So, if you want to come to that, it's December, it's at the end of May, you got to sign up now. in Knoxville. It's pretty crazy. you know that there is something though about the phone itself the device itself. Marshall McLuhan talked about this.
The medium is the message. Neil Postman talked about this. It's that there's something about the way that we get information that changes how we think, how we process, whether we process. And I think It's increasingly become how we think about ourselves and how we think about other people.
So we think about other people. as means to an end. As those who can like my post, give me the affirmation that I want. And if we're uncertain or... not clear about the response that we're going to get.
We get super nervous. I'm talking about teenagers primarily about making phone calls and things that feel really, really vulnerable that just yesterday would have been like, you know, radical technologies. I was talking about this again with somebody the other day. I can't even remember who it was. It was like.
You know, the crazy thing about my phone is that it can. Keep me in touch. face to face with my daughters who are hundreds of miles away at a college. And that same device can keep me from looking at my kids in the eye who are just right next to me. Right.
I mean, that's the dynamic that is so weird about these things. And so. Anyway, there's a lot of work to be done to recover the ground that's been lost. I'm surprised you didn't mention again how bad kids write since you're such a harsh grader. That has something to do with.
Our emailing and texting and posting and so on.
Well, they're not reading. If you want to write well, you have to read. And if you want to read, you probably have to get off your phone. No, that's right. I just saw a post from someone the other day.
It's like, I'm working. on my book and I thought Wow. Given what I know about how you write on Facebook. Anyway, well we'll let that go. At the Colson Center, we're committed to strengthening families, churches, and schools to be faithful influences for Christ.
Because in a culture severed from truth, the question isn't how do we fix everything, but how can we be faithful where God has placed us? In 2026, we want to help families, educators, and church leaders answer that question with courageous faith. But we need your help. Make your best gift to the Colson Center by December 31st. Thanks to a generous $500,000 challenge grant, your gift will have double the impact.
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Well, let's talk about hell, John. There's been a controversy online this week. We don't have to get too deep into the actual controversy itself, but I want to ask you about it because I want to hear your theological defense of hell and the way that the church has typically conceptualized it.
So, Kirk Cameron. Has a podcast with his son where they talk about theology. And I've always deeply appreciated how outspoken and also just really kind and charming Kurt Cameron is. I think he's a. Great public witness for the gospel.
But he has an episode that he did with his son recently, and they were talking about this concept of hell. And he was making a distinction between hell as A state of eternal conscious torment. and annihilation. Meaning, and he was arguing for the annihilationist view, which is essentially if you refuse to accept Jesus' sacrifice on the cross and you die. Your name is erased from the book of life, and it is as if you were never here.
And he references a couple prophecies and some Old Testament stuff. Suggesting that you're not in perpetual agony, you just are annihilated.
Some of this to me feels a little bit like Another attempt for us to understand something that's really not understandable. It's so hard for us to try and conceptualize things that would be outside of time, if that makes sense. But that doesn't mean that this isn't important.
So this is clearly a break with orthodoxy. Can you help me understand the different sides of the views here?
Well, it is a fascinating conversation in my mind. And I know that some people will think and have accused Kirk Cameron of going into heresy. And others, I think, have rightly, and I appreciated saying, this is not. A view that is heretical. This is a view that is maybe heterodox.
In other words, it's outside of what the church has. has taught about this and not every view that misaligns For example, if you taught that God doesn't judge anyone, now we're talking about heresy. If you're talking about that. People can become righteous before God with their own works.
Now we're talking. About A heresy. Why?
Well, because Now we're talking about something fundamentally different. a difference of of of substance and not of means or or or method. I think this view is wrong, the annihilationist view. It is a view that pops up throughout church history as people try to make sense of a couple things. And if you truly wrestle with hell, you have to make sense of these things.
So that's the other thing that I appreciated. I appreciate about the conversation is that you have to align hell. Hell's a hard thing to align in the larger metanarrative of scripture. Kirk brings up one of those things where he says You know, it seems out of line with the character of God to have eternal consciousness. Punishment.
And that's a hard thing to align because we do have the character of God that is revealed to us in Scripture. And then Further revealed in the person of Jesus Christ? And how does that align with something that seems So cruel, in which there's no end to it. And that's really the real problem. The other thing that has to be aligned, and this is where, in my own mind, is a harder conversation.
'Cause I think the first one I can, I can, I can. At least found ways to Pull together. The second one that's a little bit harder is that the narrative of Scripture ends with the restoration of all things. Right starts with the creation of the heavens and earth and goes to the new creation. the new heavens and the new earth.
That's the biblical story.
So the biblical story is not focused on the sin and salvation of the individual. It's focused on the work of God, who is the creator, to renew and restore all things.
Well, where does hell fit into that narrative of renewal and restoration? It was funny just this week, unrelated, I promise. We weren't having this conversation around the table. But my son asked, Dad is There's a new heaven and new earth. Is there a new hell?
And I thought, that's a good question. That's a d's a darn good question. I was like, no, there's not. There's nothing like that described. And he's like, well, and you know, you could tell he was wrestling with it on a different sort of level.
And that's where the story ends. Look, I'm not, I'm not. John, I'm sorry. That is so adorable because if I can't even bring up a whiff of the concept of hell, because my daughters will start to list. Loved ones that we know who have not yet decided to follow Jesus, and it will end in just absolute despair and crying.
So, this is just another adorable difference between little boys and little girls, but go on. There's a lot of differences, but you know, there's a couple things to mention, right? Number one, That those who believe in hell don't do this out of an uncare, like an actual, and what I mean by hell is. Is eternal conscious. Punishment.
They believe that the Bible teaches it.
So, though I have a hard time aligning it. Particularly with the second thing that I brought up, it's not an optional belief because the Bible seems to clearly suggest. especially in a few passages, that the punishment is eternal, that the punishment is conscious.
Now do I think that our ideas of hell have been embellished in what that eternal and conscious aspect looks like? You bet. lot of us think about how more like Dante, than what the Bible actually says, you know. Or for some of us who've had a particularly Baptist upbringing in certain segments of the Baptist tradition. There was this thing called the Burning Hell film, which I found out just recently was still on YouTube.
And you can find it. And there was an annual showing of the Burning Hell film where it was basically a Baptist version of Dante on film. having to do with a biker gang. I don't want to make fun of it, but it was scary, you know? It was pretty scary.
Even if those embellishments are indeed embellishments and The Bible does use both language that seems to be literal. you know, for example, the literal part seems to be eternal. You know, the righteous will go into everlasting life, the wicked will go into everlasting punishment. Uh it seems to be conscious. There's also language that's used that readers would have recognized as reflecting cultural realities, like the burning pit of garbage outside the city walls and other things.
And that words we use for hell are also words that reflect at that time death. And that's where the justification for annihilationism comes from. But I just, if you look at the biblical witness, that seems selective. The biblical witness. Seems to suggest that hell is eternal and its punishment.
So, even though I have a hard time aligning with it, I have to actually go with not what I can align. But I have to go with what I think the Bible clearly teaches. And then I want to hold.
Some of the other things that some people seem to be really certain about, I'm not certain about. I'm not certain about, you know. The worm that dieth not, and what that is, that a metaphorical worm or a real worm? In the Burning Hell film, it was a real worm. It was worms, actually.
So, just so you know. And again, it had to do with a biker gang.
So, there's just a lot. Please tell me it was Hell's Angels. A lot. I don't know if they were able to use that copyright. I can't remember.
But. There is room that there's not as much kind of clarity or descriptive details that many Christians assume. because of some of these other images that we have been given or taught. But there is clear teaching about it, and that's where we have to get our information. Particularly, Jesus talked about it.
You know, now this was a a sermon point. A lot of sermons that I heard growing up, you know, Jesus talked more about hell than he did about heaven. Maybe. I think he talked about eternal life. And did it in a general way more than he talked about specifically hell, but he did talk about hell.
And the Bible does refer to hell, and so you have to wrestle with this. Throughout the history of the church, the church Fathers, theologians have wrestled with this. They're surprising. individuals, theologians, who agree with this view of annihilation, the most prominent being John Stott. John Stott, you know, one of the top and most significant theological voices.
Of the last remarkable pastoral wisdom, A preacher almost unparalleled in many ways, and a theological writer. That did not go down a slippery slope. And that's another thing that I heard.
Now, there are some views that lead to a slippery slope. right i said this years ago if you believe that Marriage is whatever we want it to be. You've probably already believed that the Bible is a book of advice and not a book of authoritative revelation from God. And that almost always holds true. The slippery slope is to say that God wouldn't punish anyone.
Well, that's why my ears were pricked when he said that's not what he said, but he didn't say that with. No, he didn't. But when he said something like, it's not consistent with God's character. I think I have, you know, PTSD from hearing that sort of argument to justify, for example, God would never have punished Jesus on the cross like that and, you know, that kind of thing. Sure.
Yeah, I think that's legitimate. He said a lot more than that. And those who hold the annihilation view, I think oftentimes. Say a lot more than that. I mean, there is a rich theological tradition.
Now, if you want to go down the rabbit hole on this, both to Views on this that would be unorthodox, primarily historical, what the church has taught, what the Bible says, and then. To what I think would be heretical, in other words, beyond heterodox to heretical views, where Not only are we kind of Struggling with how God punishes, but whether God punishes or not. You know, this whole series, the Counterpoint series from Zondervan. There's books on the end times, there's books on salvation, there's books on biblical authority, there's books on creation, and there's a book on hell, which is four views on hell. And now the the views here are uh you know The literal view, which would see hell as a literal place of eternal conscious punishment.
The metaphorical view says the punishment is real, but the words that are used in scripture are more metaphorical than actual. The purgatorial view, which of course reflects more of a Roman Catholic position, and the conditional view. Which is a where it goes kind of beyond to questioning whether God punishes at all. And these four views, what I love about these four views books, or three views books, depending on how many views there are. is that you get a view and then you get the other three authors.
responding to that view. And then you get another advocate of another view, and then the other three or however many authors respond to that one.
So you get every view argued. You get every view responded to by every view argued. And then you get some some some reflection.
So it's it's a deep dive that you could really use and go down that that rabbit hole. On any of these theological issues. But I did appreciate, and I wanted to say that, I appreciated those who pointed out that there is a difference between saying God doesn't punish anyone. Because we dismiss biblical teaching on God's judgment, on God's wrath. On God's clear moral standards that He enforces on individuals and on the universe, which is just about as obvious as you can get.
I mean, you've got to remove entire books. Particularly Old Testament prophets from the Bible. I remember, you know, years ago, there was a big controversy on hell, and it would be a mistake to say that these two are equal. It was Rob Bell writing his book, denying any sort of punishment whatsoever. How he was arguing, and so on, where he got to was arguing for something else.
And I had just come back from one of my first years as a family going through. Holy Week services. I think it was a Maundy Thursday service. And I had just kind of read that book. And I thought, all this liturgy about repentance that has been part of at least the church, you know, the Anglican church for so long, you got to change all this language if he's right, right?
Because, you know. Saying things like, I have offended against your holy laws, there is no good in me. That sort of thing. You know, this is how people have wrestled with. Who they are in light of the clear biblical witness about sin and judgment.
and prayers at at at the time of of death, you know. You know, please place between me and your wrath, you know, the work of Christ. You know, that sort of language. Requires that you take these passages seriously. And so there's just a difference between saying God doesn't judge.
And saying I'm struggling with how God judges.
Now, your point, like, if the whole argument were, I can't reconcile these two things.
So therefore I'm going to reject the biblical witness and go with. then that's a problem. I don't think that's what what what happened this week. I I don't But there are people who make that argument. That's not an argument.
As a Christian, you have to take seriously what God has chosen to reveal. about Who he is? and how he is going to act. There's way too much clear witness on this to say that That he's not going to judge. He doesn't have moral standards.
That part's pretty clear in scripture.
So I understand, like, we can be patient with each other and everyone who's wrestling with this kind of thing. Death is very strange and hard to wrap our minds around, and it's normal and human. to try to imagine what it is and what happens afterwards. That being said, you know, I read Dr. Al Moeller's kind of response to this in World Opinions Today.
We're recording this on Thursday, and he kind of laid out Kirk Cameron's argument and then said, you know, briefly mentioned that Jesus mentions. What appears to be conscious torment in the gospel, and therefore it would be. You know, I think his last line is like: it would be horrible to misunderstand the horror of hell, or something like that. But why is it so important to know or understand this question. Outside of the fact that it is critically important that we take the Bible seriously, and that if you start to parse it and choose to believe some things over others, then the whole thing falls apart.
I understand that. I understand that there's like a motivating power. Hypothetically, if people believe that they're headed for eternal conscious torment, that could motivate you to. Make some spiritual changes, and that's not without merit. But I don't know that that is sufficient to explain.
why it matters that we know this. Yeah. Well, I think there's a couple answers to that. Number one is, it matters because God. Thought it mattered enough to reveal it.
There's a lot of things that God doesn't address. Are there other worlds and other dimensions where there's other creatures? And is there an Aslan-like figure that goes and sacrifices. We you know, that that's not what he's chosen to reveal. But he has chosen to reveal this.
So the first and most important thing is it matters because God thought it mattered enough to reveal it to us. And you got to take that sort of witness seriously. Secondly, there is a sense when you talk about that if we truly are morally guilty, Before God? then it's kind of God to let us know that. And to what extent this at least speaks to?
It is kind of God. to offer You know, in your words, a motivation, but I think it's even. More than just a motivation. It's a motivation built on reality. It's not a manipulation.
It's a motivation. The cruelest thing you can say to someone who's not okay is that they are. And it is actually kind and loving. if there is a moral standard that we have all violated, To let us know that, so that we can also know a way out. If you remember what Paul wrote to Timothy, uh, In 2 Timothy 3, 16, all scriptures God breathed, so it comes from God.
And it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, those four things, right?
So, teaching, it tells us what's true. Rebuking, it tells us how we have missed what's true. It's correcting. Not only do we know how we failed to live up to what's true, but we know how to get back on track. And then training and righteousness.
you know, how to actually go forward. And I think about that a lot because what if Paul had written. All scripture is God-breathed and it's useful for teaching and rebuking. Boy, that would be really depressing, right? In other words, here's what's true, and here's how you've screwed up.
Period. I mean, that would be hopeless. You know, we would be lost in our sins, as Paul writes other words. But God, in his kindness, allows that to happen. I think hell as a motivation is okay, but it's also a reality.
It's not a hollow motivation. It's actually what's actually true. I get the struggle as a parent. particularly with young kids and how to think and talk about this. I I don't think that the reality of it should be a source of just fear.
Sometimes it can be used to just constantly hang over a kid's head and Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure you're saved? Are you sure you're saved? And that, I think, undermines what the Bible also says clearly about the kindness and the goodness and the work of Christ.
But there is a bit of a response that the Bible elicits from us in this teaching that's. like what you said from your daughters. They may be too young for that response, but that it should motivate us too to care for others. This is certainly what motivated some of the great ministries. This is certainly, you know, what was at the heart of Jonathan Edwards.
Who preached more on God's goodness, His creation, His mercy, and His than anything else? But you can't get around the wrath chapter of the story. It is there. and the wrath looks a particular way.
Now again. I think the Bible does use a lot of metaphorical language in describing that wrath. But that's not a way to soften the wrath. It's a way to. Elicit that.
And then do we love him enough? to actually Talk about this and to tell others. And it seems increasingly bizarre. But think about the downward, I think. If we talk about the slippery slope, Not of rejecting a particular kind of God's judgment, but when you reject God's judgment, Right.
then the next slippery part of the slippery slope is telling everyone they're okay. And uh That's not true. David Brooks, a couple years ago, several years ago now, wrote a book on sin and how we need to return to the idea of sin. There was a psychologist. who who who wrote about this years before.
That we're not helping people out of their mental distress because we've eliminated something that's really important, which is the idea of sin. Carl Truman is writing now about desecration, about a culture that's not only rejected the idea of sin, but now. Actually, morally prioritizes the idea of trespass, which is one of the words for sin. that we're a better culture if we're pushing the edge. You think about kind of the groiper movement, right, as edge pushing.
It's actually, there's a phrase for it. The edge lords, you know, these are people who constantly are pushing the edge. It's a form of desecration.
So there is a direction you go further and further and further away from God if you reject. the concept of judgment. And that is really clear in scripture. Also, there is too much in there about a conscious eternal punishment. To reject that.
So that's my view. But I think that wrestling with it. and also wrestling with these tensions. I think the two big tensions are God reveals his character as a particular way. This is really hard to reconcile.
God reveals the end of the story as being the restoration of all things. And that's hard to piece together. And I think we should feel that tension. We don't feel that tension. Maybe we're not paying attention to what the text actually says.
Well, John, let's move on to some questions here. I have one that came in from a listener named Ashley. She is asking about our support for school choice. We mentioned this briefly last week. She said, I live in Texas and I homeschool my kids.
Here I have incredible freedom in homeschooling. It's treated by the state as a private school in terms of what's required of us, but I can foresee a day when that's not the case. Especially with school choice recently being passed, where the government gives money their strings attached. I'd prefer the government stay in its lane, which I don't believe involves my kids' education.
So this is a common view and a very understandable one, and I absolutely applaud Ashley for homeschooling her kids. I have no doubt that she is a wonderful teacher to them. She's clearly interested in their formation and education. That's awesome.
So the few things I will say just briefly is that, first of all, the government is involved in teaching kids. It has involved itself over the past several decades, and whether you send your kids to public school or not. The government is teaching kids. You have an active role to play in the way your government does that. Because even if, again, you're not sending your kids to their schools, you are funding it.
So your property taxes. Are going to that, as well as other taxes in more indirect ways as well. You absolutely have the ability and I would say the obligation to then speak into how the government spends that money. Because you are the government. We are a government of and by the people.
So, I understand the concern that school choice would lend more power to the government. I think anything short of the public education system as we see it today, where it is. indoctrinating the vast majority of the country's kids. Anything that You know, gets More of parents' own tax money back in their own hands to direct the education of their kids is going to lessen, not increase. The government's hold over our kids' education.
It's going to loosen those. Strings. I also think that school choice, generally as a principle, the more available it is, and the more families who inevitably will use it because of how bad. The situation is generally in public schools in America is gonna help ultimately in the long run the public school system as well, because it's gonna create competition in a really good way.
So, again, I think it is understandable and smart and prudent to be concerned about what the government, you know, what power you're giving the government. But school choice will take power away from the government. And if you, you know, if school choice is passed in your community and then you don't like something that your, you know, local or state government put as a string on that or what you view as a string, then change it. Right? And you know, that that is that sounds easier said than done, but that's how the system works.
And then I'll just say, practically speaking, here in Ohio, and then we have several friends in Arizona, we lived there for a while, two states that Have in recent years dramatically expanded our school choice, we have not seen this become a problem. The school choice movement is healthy and thriving. And so far, we have not seen communities or governments putting more restrictions on people. You are the government. You're funding public education whether you want to or not.
School choice is not the government. Paying extra money or new money to families. It's letting families keep more of their money that's already funding education and allowing them to put it towards the education that they want for their families. John, do you want to weigh in on that at all? Yeah, I mean, I think you hit a lot of the highlights.
I mean, I think that it is quite possible for the government to enact strings on this, and they will if they can. But it's better than what the status quo is. It's way better than what the status quo is. The status quo is that we subsidize a form of education that all of us don't participate in and we don't actually believe in and is actually not giving the result that we want. And I'm not even talking about ideologically, I'm just talking about academically in a lot of situations.
So this is a way better next step. to the kind of academic freedom. Than that, we would hope to have. It's way better than the status quo. Way, way, way better.
And so, you know, I'm not an absolutist on legislation. Politics is the art of the practical. I believe that when it comes to abortion, I believe that when it comes to marriage, I believe that when it comes to this, we win as many incremental victories as we can. Incremental victories build momentum in a particular direction. I hope the end of this is getting the state out of Education altogether.
And if you think about kind of actual proposals. and steps that are being taken now to either Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh or even what's the word? Basically Dismantle the Department of Education, that's another incremental step on this spectrum.
So we're headed right now in an opposite direction.
Now what you'll have is blue states doubling down and red states going the other direction. The crazy ones are the libertarian states, or the more libertarian states, like out west in Arizona.
So we'll see if the experiment works long-term in Arizona. That'll be a really good sign. I think that'll, that'll be it'll be interesting, a state like that that fluctuates back and forth. in a lot of ways. But it is way better than what's there.
And what has been there has been a stranglehold. And this is at least heading. In the opposite direction. And not all school choice programs are created equal. Not all school choice programs.
Come without strings, but it's better than the alternative. John, there was another one I want, another feedback I want to bring to you now. This was actually from a listener from The World and Everything In It last week. But we also spoke about this on Breakpoint this week. This was about President Trump's comments regarding the Somali community.
We were talking about that fraud case out of Minnesota. And this commenter, Andrew, he says that he does not want to necessarily defend all of Trump's comments. This is when he called the Somali community garbage and said he doesn't want them in this country and so on and so forth. But Andrew was pushing back and basically saying, you know, but you have you considered all of the nasty things that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has said, for example, or have you considered some of the edgier comments that the prophet Hosea made about idol worshipers, you know, calling them Cows and promiscuous wife and silly doves and that kind of thing.
So, kind of defending, I think, President Trump's comments here. What do you say to that?
Well, in the segment itself, not to mention in our segment, we talk all about the problems with immigration and the critical theory mindset being a bad worldview, a wrong worldview, the wrong prescription, because it treats an entire group of people as being Morally innocent, sometimes morally superior because of an immigration status. It's the same way as it's the same mistake that's made by those who condemn an entire group of people as people. Because they belong in a different status. Anytime you separate people along those lines rather than along the lines that the scripture gives. Which is the creation and fall lines.
Creation, every human is made in the image of God. Every human is fallen. The line between good and evil runs right down the human heart. These aren't just things we believe, these are things that, because we believe them, have to shape how we think about. groups of people and individuals and nations and laws, because they're eternal truths that are Pre-political realities.
It's always interesting to me when the justification. is Well, that person did worse. You know, you can't condemn me because that it's kind of a form of. What about ism that is very popular in moral discourse today, popularly, and it's just hollow. You know, because People on the left have said worse things about people on the right.
or have said awful things about groups of people, or have Basically, completely confused reality and morality doesn't mean we should. It doesn't mean that conservatives are off the hook because progressives do it or progressives are off the hook because conservatives do it. You know, something. Mm-hmm. Dumb or foolish or silly said by Nancy Pelosi doesn't make something that the president says right.
We have to be principled. The really the thing this that this questioner who also was a you know young man seminary grad. What I was really struck by is Also, earlier this week, I had a kind of a long involved conversation. with a young man about some of the same issues. The questions were being asked in really good faith: like, what about this?
And what about this? And have you heard this phrase? And The questions were really along the lines of like, hey, is there a reason to racially divide? People. in and kind of a moral judgment.
And we always have to go back and say, No. Because to do that is to limit our ability to understand what's really at work. In human nature, and it's something that the Christian worldview just doesn't allow. But I do think right now there is a moment, and this is really what I wanted to respond to. I'm always happy to tackle questions like these and.
And to be challenged and say, you know, you didn't say everything. And I never say everything because no one can ever say everything.
So most of the questions we get is, why didn't you say everything? It's like, well, because, you know, we're running out of time. But the larger point is, I do think right now, we have good evidence that there is a growing group of young men. who are asking really hard questions. and they're being attracted to the to to voices.
Who answer those questions a lot of times out of outrage or out of frustration? with how things have gone wrong. I understand the sentiment. What I really want to do is call the Church to action. I think young men right now are looking for answers in a way that they maybe weren't a generation ago or two generations ago.
or three generations to go? And we need to take seriously what it is to wrestle with. The faith and how it applies to the wider world and the problems of the wider world. at a level that we haven't so far. otherwise we're going to lose a generation of young men.
To what I call, you know, Groiper-adjacent philosophy. They're going to think along the lines of Nietzsche uh and Nietzsche. kind of these themes in a lot of these questions and so on. You know, this week I had a commentary. that talked about groiperism as a form of feminism.
Because it is a kind of feminism for men, right? It turns vices of masculinity into virtues of masculinity, just like feminism did the opposite. It treats men as victims, just as feminism treated women as victims. And what I mean by that is. Not victims, because all of us are victims of a fallen world in one sense, but that were victims.
and therefore we're innocent victims, which isn't the same thing at all. And then seeing an eternal and unbridgeable Divide. conflict between the sexes, between men and women. And as a way of thinking about everything. And in the grouper case, it's not just between men and women, it's between usually.
you know, white men and everybody else.
Now Are there problems with open immigration and open borders in which people who come into a particular nation aren't expected to be enculturated into a new way of life, Is there a difference between Radical Islamic culture and Western culture.
Well, there should be, and yes, there is, and yes, there should be expectations of citizenship. But that's not the same thing as you know, demonizing an entire group of people. as people. And that's what is unacceptable. That's what we can't do.
And The framing of the question kind of assumes a lack of a principle, and that's really what we want to get to. Appreciated the question. I think that's the conversation we need to have with a generation of young men. I appreciate. The question.
Let's have the conversation. I'll have it. as much as as as we need to have it. I'm having it with some folks. Personally and privately, in our community, in our church, and so on.
And I'm getting more of this. And what I want to do is call the church to this conversation.
So, that we can actually enculturate and also. catechize a group of young men. Who are looking for it? I mean, gosh, you have eager, open learners right now, at least with a group of people. And I hope we walk into that opportunity.
I wonder, I almost wonder to say, like, should we call every church right now to a young men's ministry? I'm kind of almost there. And let's get them married while we're at it. Yes, indeed.
Well, John, that's going to do it for the show today. I'll just say, by way of recommendations, I love the four views books you were talking about. Is that what it's called? Four Views? It's a whole series.
Yeah, it's the Counterpoint series. But yeah, that was going to be my recommendation. And if you go to a university and learn how to write, probably not the University of Oklahoma, and defend your own views, maybe one day you can write for the Counterpoint series from Zondervan. That was my attempt at bringing this show full circle. John's shaking his head.
Thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint this week. From the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer. Alongside John Stone Street, we'll see you all back here next week. God bless.
