You're listening to a special year-end edition of Breakpoint This Week, where we talk about the top stories of the week from a Christian worldview. Today we're going to look at 2025 in review, what stories shaped the culture, and what is next. We have a lot to get to this week. We're so glad you're with us as always. Please stick around.
Well, welcome to a very special end of year recap/slash looking forward into next year episode of Breakpoint This Week. From the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street, president of the Coulson Center. John, this is our last episode of 2025, which feels crazy to say. But I thought we could start the show by talking about some of the biggest stories of the year. Not necessarily single-item news stories, although those are fair game too.
But let's just talk about how the world changed this year. Could be cultural shifts. Could be single-item news stories. Why don't you kick us off? What do you think was one of the major stories of 2025?
Well, I and part of this comes from my book, if I might say that, The Practical Guide to Culture, which for the record is being updated and revised and will be released sometime in 2026.
So cool.
So let's all look ahead. It's actually been out for 10 years now. But one of the framings that we put in that book, and I always think about it. for programs like this or when we think about kind of looking at Culture on a wider scale than just kind of what happened in the last week or a particular story. Is what we call undercurrents and waves in the book.
And we liken culture to water. There's an old Chinese proverb that says: if you wanna know what water is, don't ask the fish. And the implication, although I did once ask a group of high school students, why wouldn't you ask the fish? And they said, well, because fish can't talk. No, that's not really the reason.
It's because fish don't know they're wet. Culture is like that to us. Culture normalizes things. But there are, you know, moments in which we get hit by a cultural wave, and sometimes the sea is a lot more rocky and rough than it than it is at other times. And we certainly have been in a.
Couple decades where there's been many, many cultural waves, and we get hit by those cultural waves. But under the surface, even in a seemingly, you know, somewhat a peaceful and pleasant Body of water, there are also undercurrents. These are things that you may not see, but they're. Could dramatically be changing the landscape. That could be working in much slower ways to.
uh completely change things. And so I always think about that. And so I think we could talk about, you know, particular stories. Like, I think one of the biggest ones, obviously, was the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And But there's also what was happening leading up to that and what's happened since then.
And I'm not talking about Candace Owens, but I'm talking about more generally the vibe shift, right? That's part of also the breaks that were put on a movement that. Three, four years ago seemed unstoppable. I'm talking about the trans movement. That would be a headline that we could talk about because there were more stories about that, even last week, right?
When the Trump administration and HHS basically said, you're going to stop doing this. you know, if you're a healthcare provider in the United States, you're going to stop doing this on minors. And that's a dramatic difference from just a few years ago, where it seemed like this one idea was going to run roughshod over the entire culture and every aspect of culture.
So, what do you make of the vibe shift? In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and this memorial service that became the largest evangelistic event in human history, you had reports of people coming back to church. Then, by the end of the year, you had reports going, well, maybe it wasn't kind of quite that much, and it's happening with young men, but not really young women, and all this sort of stuff. What do we make of the vibe shift? Are we in a backpedaling situation from the kind of the edge of the moral abyss, or are we actually reattaching?
To truth. And I don't know that I have an answer to that, but to me, that is the most interesting kind of worldview story of 2025: we got more information about this, we saw more trend lines. We have reports of a quiet revival in Europe, particularly in Britain. And at the same time in Britain, we had a government clamping down on speech and clamping down on religion. We had a pastor arrested in the UK just this week for praying too close to an abortion clinic.
And so they're penalizing thought in a sense and prayers in the UK. And certainly social media posts are being heavily policed. There.
So where are we? As a West, and I think we are in this moment where there's kind of a realization. of just how uh vulnerable and fragile we are. Uh, that inspired a lot of what we did with the Truth Rising film is talking about that and really trying to kind of do a you are here moment. Our theme for our Colson Center National Conference in May is you are here.
Like, let's get some handles around this.
So, to me, There's competing information, there's competing studies, but it's certainly different than it was just. Five or ten years ago. You know, even the rise of the n remember the biggest religion story Many years in a row was the rise of the nuns, the N-O-N-Es.
Well, Ryan Burge suggests that that number is kind of say consistent, but it hasn't spiked like it has the couple of years. And are there more people going to church? And which churches are they going to? That's another really interesting question. And so what a moment to be alive for Christians when you see this both in terms of challenges and opportunities.
Last night we were in the car with our daughters and Aaron and I were just we're talking about AI. He had just done a really fascinating interview. And my oldest daughter started asking us a question, and you could tell by her voice that she was starting to cry. And she said something like, why am I a kid at the worst time to be a kid? And it's, I mean, that's brutal.
This fault lies with Aaron and I. It's because we were talking specifically about how tech has absolutely overtaken the classroom, like, and how there was really no evidence that this was going to be good. And actually, evidence is starting to come out that it's really bad. And all of our test score, the test scores are horrible and all this stuff. And we, but it led to this really sweet conversation where we were like, nothing about this is unique.
Like the specifics are unique. The technology is unique. This is us telling our daughter this, but. Actually, we live in a really special time. Like, it is a gift that we live after.
Christianity really became The dominant force, at least in the West, and the way we've built it's it's a gift that we live after Jesus came and that we get to know who he is. It's a gift that we live after penicillin. Like we but it's also really hard for these reasons. But it was a A really it was a a good um Check on the vibe shift for Aaron and I too to talk about: like, there's really hard, uniquely hard parts about this moment and uniquely great parts about this moment. I think vibe shift is another word for the currents that you're talking about, right?
Because vibes can vibes have shifted in good ways and in bad ways. Through lots of these major stories of the year.
So, one of the first ones I wanted to bring up to you. is one we've talked about a lot, including last week, which is Rising anti-Semitism, and maybe not even just the anti-Semitism itself, but the normalization of it.
So in 2014, I went to Kiev. And that we were there about six months after Putin had invaded and annexed Crimea.
So things were just starting to get kind of volatile there. And we went to Babiyar, which is this site a little bit outside of the city, where um in the 40s The Nazis basically marched. Thousands and thousands of Ukrainian citizens from Kiev, men, women and children, to this ravine and shot them dead. one group after another, and then they were all buried in this ravine. And There's a menorah built there, like a bronze statue.
And the day we visited, someone had spray-painted a swastika on this. Statue, and we were all just truly shocked, like utterly shocked. that this was possible. And it would happen. I mean, we were taking photos.
It was covered in the news reasonably so.
Meanwhile, we're sitting here today, and I just finished watching a video online of there's a menorah that's lit right now at Bondi Beach in Australia. And a woman walks right up to it and blows out all the candles. And this is, we're talking just a few days after 15 people were murdered during a Hanukkah celebration. And that's shocking and horrible. And it was posted online.
But even the reaction doesn't feel, it doesn't feel the same level of shock as it did to me in 2014 at Babiar.
So it's rising anti-Semitism, absolutely. Everybody has seen the violence, but also the normalization of it feels like a big story. Yeah, that is a big story. And we saw it in multiple different situations, including earlier this year. In Colorado, here in the U.S., right, where a Muslim man who was seemingly a family man in a local school with kids, you know.
ended up killing, I think, two people at a uh a race uh or a kind of a walk uh s uh maybe a benefit walk for Jewish people in Boulder, Colorado. And we of course had the uh the tail end of uh continued anti-Semitism that showed up on campuses and Then there's also the rise of Islam. In other words, there's multiple sources for this anti-Semitism. And it's happening, I think. interestingly enough, at a lot of the same time, because historically, obviously, there's been Muslim sources of anti-Semitism and anti-Semit Semitic violence, even.
We've also seen it from the left. We've seen it since the October 7th attacks by Hamas, the support of Palestinians. And that has turned into not just that, but also active violence against. Jewish people, particularly on college campuses in America and around the West. And you also see the growth, particularly at the end of this past year, from the political research.
Right, the nihilistic right, what some people have called the woke right. Where again, you're dividing people up and you're assigning moral value based on non-moral things, based on ethnicity, and based on history and based on religion. It's an interesting thing to look at that this kind of never goes away. It keeps coming up. But of course, it's only interesting insofar that.
You separate yourself from the real horror and violence and the perpetual fear that it causes. And when it emerges, It it really creates this. I was uh listening to another podcast this week and You know, you can't go to a Jewish school or a synagogue or any place like that, almost anywhere in the West. without there being just an incredible heightened sense of security. And that is a form of terror, right?
Where you're always constantly living under this sort of threat.
So a lot of these stories are related, right? And certainly the vibe shift story is about six or seven things that are really positive. And then you got three or four things here emerging in the story of anti-Semitism in 2025. And certainly it predates it, but it hit a new crescendo, right? This is certainly a real wave.
Uh that has risen again. And I'll say it again because I think as Christians, whenever we talk about this sort of thing, we have to talk about it. Not just as concerned people, not just as Christians who recognize the dignity of all people, and when anyone is terrorized, it's It's a dehumanizing and awful sort of thing that we have to speak up against. But specifically because Christians understand. That the Jewish people have had a special place in God's redemptive history.
Now, this is not a case for Zionism, nor is this a case for a replacement. Theology, we get asked those questions a lot at the Colson Center. But I'm just reflecting the fact that there was the narrative that the Bible tells puts this one nation. Having been chosen by God, right after, by the way, the separation of the nations.
So after Babel, God separates the nations, He chooses none of them. Instead, he chooses a man, makes of him a new nation, and promises that the primary purpose of this nation is to bless all the nations of the earth. And that's going to come through Jesus Christ, who is a Jew, but also throughout his life and ministry, you have these indications: the Syrophoenician woman, the Roman centurion at the cross, that the blessing is not just for the Jewish people. and that God is grafting together, as Paul writes. his people, and that is centered around the Messiah.
And look, working that out theologically is complicated enough. without trying to work it out. From theology to policy or to international politics. My point is that there's a supernatural dimension of this. We know at this time of year, if you celebrated Advent, that at least some of the readings.
have to do with The dragon's attempt in Revelation to snuff out Jesus from the very beginning, the seed of the woman. In other words, there's been this cosmic battle happening for a really long time. And clearly, the. Historic Perpetual rise of anti-Semitic sentiment and violence. and all-out attacks and ex attempts to even exterminate.
The Jewish people was part of this cosmic battle. And we have to think cosmically, which brings up, if I can, I'm going to throw this back to you, another interesting headline: big meta. vibe shift, which could be considered a good thing, and I think it is a good thing. People wrote about this. We've been talking for years about, you know, new atheists recognizing maybe that Jesus wasn't all that bad and Christianity was maybe a source of good.
And even a couple of them becoming strong believers, some well-known atheists coming to Christ like Ayanne Hersiali and others. And But there's also a number of books talking about the resurgence of religious belief in the West. That even as you have some of this other stuff happening, you do, that is a change from what's called disenchantment, which is sociologist Charles Taylor's description of secularism and a secular culture. To what Rodrigo is titling and others re-enchantment. The renewal of spiritual belief, which takes Really positive things, and sometimes really creepy things, and weird things, and conspiracy theories, and stuff like that.
What do you do with UFOs? What do you do? Is there demons and artificial intelligence? We'll have to get to artificial intelligence later. Let's put that later.
But Re-enchantment. This is an interesting part of the vibe shift. at least a realization that secularism, that our scientism, That our rational materialism cannot answer all the questions of the human experience, but not even on a state or moral or government level. Yeah. I wonder if like all of human history if you looked back That it just always is going, the culture is always waffling between these two.
Maybe this is a uniquely Western thing. But to go from kind of secularism towards re-enchantment and then back and forth. because you could see the obvious reasons why. Secularism fails, and then people start looking for reasons or explanations for things they can't explain. And then they maybe get into, like you're saying, weird kind of new age-y stuff, as we call it.
And then that can't really fully explain it. Then we go back to secularism. Do you think COVID was a kind of a precursor to this moment? You know, just given the institutional failures of kind of what we thought of as science and hard science and the lack of trust in that has given somewhat rise to this? Yeah, it's a good question.
I do think, by the way, the waffling between secularism and religious views. It maybe hasn't been pendulum-like, and I think it is uniquely the West because of the growth of science and so on. Um Oz Guinness has pointed in his book, The Last Christian on Earth, to the gravedigger thesis. Which is, it really was Christianity elevated human reason to a place of actually being able to ascertain truth, right? This is Kepler saying, God, I think your thoughts after you, right?
But the ability that humans have to really ascertain wisdom and knowledge about the universe. And Being supported by an individualism, a value of individuals, not just a collective, right? Which is very pagan, right? Humans don't have real value. We have to appease the gods.
There's not orders. The universe isn't ordered, so we're not going to have real knowledge of it.
So it looks more like that, but then Christianity, because it also rightly acknowledges the fall of man, may be underestimated. uh how prideful humans would be with their scientific capacity. And eventually Christianity dug its own grave. That's the gravedigger thesis. It's a really fascinating piece.
And it has to do with hubris and arrogance.
Now, your question is whether that hubris and arrogance has been shattered. Right, whether our faith in ourselves and our institutions has collapsed. That's a good question. It certainly worsened it. I always think of COVID as if there were preexisting conditions that brought about its worst consequences, both health-wise and culturally speaking.
Like there were things in the waterway head, but I do remember this. The non-essential label that was put on churches by government officials. And we talked about how that wasn't nearly as scary or bad or. Problematic as the non-essential label that many Christians put on going to church, right? And we were worried coming out of COVID.
less about the crumbling authority and credibility of these institutions. And more about the fact that people just like not going to church and that. that they were going to get back to their own lives and the religious aspect of it was going to fade away. It was part of the it was part of the conversation about the nuns. And it turned out to be that maybe that maybe there is more interest in it.
And does that interest have to do with the crumbling trust in other things? Matt, that's a good question. I think it's an interesting Bit of sociology. By the way, all of this points to, I'm going to mention OzNow here twice in 10 minutes or five minutes. One of the things I learned from Oz is this concept years ago, and it really helped me make sense of worldview and the power of worldview.
And culture is plausibility. Why are some ideas more plausible and certain? aspects than others. Or at certain times than others. I mean, Darwin, for example, wasn't the first one to suggest that all living things came from a common.
Ancestor But When he suggested it. Within decades, it was the dominant narrative in the scientific establishment.
So, in other words, the culture was ready for that. It has to be a factor. That if there is a sense of re-enchantment. It's not necessarily looking to the institutional church, but it is looking beyond the materialistic. physical world to realities that go beyond that.
This is what Rodreer writes about in Living in Wonder, in which he talks about A little bit about people returning to church and being drawn into Christianity by really old, sacred, beautiful cathedrals and art. And he also talks about. UFOs You know, that's something that Lewis wrote about, right? When you open the door to the other realm. A whole lot of different things can walk through.
So, this is both the good news and the bad news. I think, too, part of this, this is such a big story because of all of the facets to it. I mean, I think plausibility is another word for vibe. You know, it's kind of. Kind of the same thing we're talking about.
You're just importing vibe into everything, just for the record. I am. I'm seeing it everywhere. I'm like a conspiracy theorist for vibes. But I think part of it too, part of the re-enchantment, if you want to call it that, is not just that people are more open to the unexplainable or to the metaphysical or things that they don't see explained by the material world.
Because that ascribes to us a certain level of rationality that I don't think we always have. I mean, I do think that that's part of it, and it's welcome. But I also think people are feeling a call and a pull towards something that gives them purpose and meaning outside of themselves. Even COVID is an example of this.
So you recommended to me this year the book by Eric Hoffer, True Believer, which was kind of meditations on what draws people to really fanatic movements. And it aged kind of strangely. I wonder when you, when did you last read that? Oh, no, it's been a while. I mean, and he was wrestling primarily with the big.
The big movements. Cold War kind of questioning. But the question of what people will give up a lot in exchange for a sense of meaning and purpose. They'll give up almost everything. And this is another big story of this year.
But I think. Um that can be for both good or ill. And I think one of the reasons people Hopefully, they are turning back towards the church or towards religion generally, is that they're searching for purpose. And I'm going to connect this in a little way to Charlie Kirk. And I want to talk to you about that story next.
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You can be confident you're called to this moment for God's purpose. Register now at ColsonConference.org. That's colsonconference.org. That was one of the big things Charlie was calling for towards the end of his life. He was telling people, specifically young men, go to church, get married, build a family, find purpose.
Not just find purpose, or he, and he wasn't. This is one of the things I loved about him too. He wasn't just telling men. You have a purpose. He was saying, build one for yourself.
Make yourself purposeful. Carve out a space for yourself and then fill that space. How has his death, not just the manner, you know, that he was murdered, but his death and the sort of the attention that it brought to his message. changed American culture?
Well, and I think that is still a question being answered. I mean, there's no question there was a kind of almost, which is a remarkable thing when you think about it being about one person, It was very 9-11-like, where in the immediate aftermath there was a rallying around faith, there was a rallying around truth, there was a rallying around church, and and personal responsibility and I want to be the Charlie, we're all Charlie kind of thing. And it it is a remarkable thing to think about. That there's very few events that We could probably name in our lifetime that had that kind of a rallying effect, even for a short amount of time. There's also that line from G.K.
Chesterton, I think. Although I'm now nervous to attribute things that you maybe just talked in, yeah, maybe it's uh maybe it's one of those others, but no, I'm pretty sure this one was Chesterton. We talked about that the the uh that human sinfulness is essentially the most. Empirically verifiable of all Christian doctrines. And now we're at that kind of further downstream.
I mean, even today, as we are recording this, and I won't give too much away about how far in advance we are, but we're trying to, you know, give ourselves some space to celebrate Christmas. There is a. The AmFest, the American Festival happening in Phoenix, which is a turning point USA event. And on stage, you have various Friends of Charlie and associates of this kind of movement that he represented and They're yelling at each other. They're calling each other out from stage.
And the dissension that kind of has created, you know, kind of been birthed in the movement by who's taking whose side and all that sort of stuff.
So in a sense, to answer your question, there's a verification here of What Pascal said about the human condition, which is that humans are both the glory and the garbage of the universe. Um that human the human ability to corrupt things and to mess things up. And to steal uh you know uh take defeat from from the jaws of victory. Um you know, that sort of thing is is is on display. specifically on you know on that level.
And yet, I find so much to be inspired by from Charlie Kirk. I find a lot of. what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called the Tempest of the Living. And the critics from the center and center left of evangelicalism about Kirk and that. You know, how can anyone, you know, they're doing this from a very pious, separated from the real world?
kind of thing. The Tempest of the Living is something that Bonhoeffer wrote to one of his students. after the Underground Seminary uh was shut down. And he basically said, because of the incarnation, Christianity is a this worldly, not an otherworldly religion. What did he say?
We we have to not dally around in what might be. Take courage and come into the tempest of the living. In other words, real faith has to be lived out. It can't be separated from, and we're from the real issues. But what's so striking about Charlie's life.
And I'm one of those who obviously knew about him. Everybody did. Did not understand how impactful his various initiatives had become. And Did a deep dive like a lot of people did after his. his murder.
And you can see it. you know, from the younger Charlie to the older Charlie. To your point that of the story. the odor he got, There are two things that defined it in my mind. Number one is, He was humble enough to seek out an incredible number of mentors, and he was a curious and ferocious learner.
I was really moved in particular when Dr. Larry Arne of Hillsdale College mentioned at the Memorial Service that Charlie had done thirty one of those Hillsdale courses. Thirty one. Not I mean, not a couple. Thirty-one.
And would communicate with him after doing each one. I mean, that's a pretty remarkable thing to complete. I mean, how many people have started those courses and not finished them, right? But 31. But I also know he was being mentored and how he shared his faith on college campuses and how he did apologetics.
How he answered skeptics and cynics, and he was also being mentored in foreign policy and international things. And, you know, those are areas that were very complex for his age and so on. And he realized that at some level there had been a good idea. And I don't want to make this just a eulogy about him, but. When you look at The older he got, the older.
The more he addressed with the young men, the question of meaning in particular, not just young men.
So when he was telling Yao Ming, No, get married, Make your bed, like Jordan Peterson was doing, but then, you know, also start a family. And go to church. And do the right thing. Stop playing video games. Maybe don't go to college.
You know, remember he said that too. He wasn't even just saying, go make your purpose. He was saying, there is meaning to the universe. And I'm going to show you where a bunch of it is, like there. It's in learning, it's in getting better, and it's in knowing.
It wasn't this self-construct sort of thing. There was a willingness where he was like, I think he realized these guys are so lost. They don't even know where to begin. I'm just going to tell them where to begin. Begin by making your bed, begin by getting out of bed, begin by, you know, getting a job.
Begin by, you know, taking a risk. Asking you to get out of the way. Get married, have babies. Yeah. And the more, the older he got, the less he got away from answering questions about.
With policy and the more he got with answering questions, About God and truth and faith and meaning you know realizing That at some level, that's where the severing of the lost voice had happened, a detachment from meaning. I think another part of his murder is, you know, it certainly changed. I think this is part of why this felt like a 9-11 moment, was that it felt like a change in my understanding of the moment that we're in.
Sort of the day before it happened, I thought we were in one kind of world. The day after it happened, I felt like we were in another. And I know a lot of people felt that same way. That's not always rational because I know about political violence and assassinations that have taken place. throughout human history, throughout the history of the United States.
But I think it's most generations, maybe it's a form of self-defense or optimism. You have to believe that you're you know, you're above we're beyond that. You know, it's like after World War I, nobody thought it World War II was possible at all.
So, in some sense, it was always possible. But this is another big story of the year: a rise in political violence, and I would say the normalization of it. You had the murder of the United Healthcare CEO kind of in broad daylight, and then the weird was that this year? Was that last year? I think it was this year, John.
Okay. I mean, obviously, it carried on. I just thought it was before that. But I also thought the California wildfires were. Not 2025, but they were.
That was yikes.
Okay. But then this year there was the murder of the state, let the state legislators in Minnesota. That happened this year as well. Um just and then I would say too just Even the reaction to Charlie's murder, there has certainly been a rise this year of the normalization of it. Or of kind of winking and nodding at it, if not so much the normalization of it.
You know, among the protesting of Israel, and that's of course another main news story of this year, is the negotiation of the deal between Israel and Hamas. The somewhat dismantling of the nuclear program in Iran, the return of the hostages to Israel. Getting back to this political violence point and the normalization point, but you know, what people did on college campuses protesting Israel and the violence they normalized, the fact that somebody at Harvard who assaulted an Israeli student is now on Harvard faculty, like this is a big story, too. Yeah, I think, and I think that was the kind of the. Tempestuous waters that Charlie was willing to go wade in, I guess, is what I'm saying.
That's the tempest of the living that he was willing to engage because. And by the way, the Mangioni killing of Brian Thompson was in December 2024.
So basically, the trial and everything else carried out this year and all the reaction. But we did see, I think, this is part of the story of the normalization of political violence. And And even if it's not violence, just that One of the things I think that was remarkable and maybe drew people to this memory, even people that were pretty anti-Charlie Kirk before his murder. who kind of changed sides and and started to respect them is He was so aspirational, you know, in other words, and it area in in an age where politicians on both sides are you know basically Refusing to try to humanize the other and actually actively trying to dehumanize and demonize. The other, Charlie got more intentional about talking across the aisle, more intentional about having good faith conversations.
And to do that, you know, really. on college campuses. And this is a place where in many ways he was not officially allowed.
So he unofficially got there, you know, kind of thing. And um I think there is something about those kinds of aspirational lives. And there were a few folks who, you know, likened what he was doing and the kind of life he was trying. to to to live and the kind of the difference he was trying to make and the the death he had. mor more as kind of a Martin Luther King.
Assassination, which was a very controversial thing to say out loud, but there are aspects where you can kind of see this was. Very similar. It's an aspirational thing. It's trying to model and point to a better way in a time where. There's very, very few voices that are kind of willing to go there.
So, I think that's probably one of the reasons that it was such an impactful. event. Certainly one of those where In his death, his platform and his voice and his influence expanded even greater than before. Uh but Here we are at the end of 2025. And the the dominant headlines about his life, his organization, his friends is that they're fighting.
And accusing each other and participating in some of these terrible trends like anti-Semitism. Not not his friends, but you know, people trying to hijack this. you know, in one way or the other. And so It does. To me, it's Pascal.
It's all in Pascal. You know, read Penseet's, but buy that book, you know. Put it somewhere where you can just get it in bits and pieces, especially what he says about the human condition. It's just so prescient. Hello, my name is Scott Miller and I have the privilege of serving as Vice President of Finance at the Coulson Center.
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Well, John, let's shift and talk about what exact where exactly are we? You referenced this briefly, but I think another big story this year, this is continuing from last year, probably. is the way the world is shifting with regards to Transgenderism. Which is just a weird word still, but a helpful shorthand for what's happening.
So you mentioned like, I just saw HHS had another press conference this week talking about kind of putting more guardrails in place in terms of this experimental stuff that they're doing with miners. And the press conference opened with him saying, Men are men, they cannot be women. Women are women, they cannot be men. And then people applaud, which. Is great, but is also like, how did we get to this moment?
Like, is this a comedy sketch or is this real life? It's real life. A welcome change, but we have a long way to go. I had a conversation with a a Republican lawmaker about this recently, and we were just agreeing that this experimentation on children needs to stop. And then this person just made an offhand comment like, yeah, consenting adults, you should be able to do whatever you want.
And that it left me with a sense of like, okay, we're on a good trajectory, but we kind of have a ways to go.
So where exactly are we with this? I don't know. I know we're in a better place than we were three years ago. I also know that disassociating From something that is terrible is not the same thing as reattaching to what is true. In other words, just because we have Basically, rejected the indoctrination and the forced.
Harm on children, which is really, if you kind of say, where are we? That's kind of the net results. We basically said, you know, okay, we're not going to hurt children anymore, but You know, to your example, and I think we see it in policy and healthcare: the idea that we're going to put this into the dustbin of. history in terms of the crazy idea that it really is. We're not there yet.
And the confusion about what it means to be a man and the confusion about what it means to be a woman. predates this and it also postdates this. And even while you have more and more federal action, it's being done in a way that can be turned right back around if the administration changes, if the Secretary of HHS changes, if the executive orders go the other way. And you can see a little bit of that by the fact that in Colorado and California and some of these very, very blue states, they haven't backed off of doubling down on this. They're not ready to pull these terrible.
Confusing sexually abusive books out of elementary school libraries. They're not ready. They want to put them back in. They're going to sue you if you try to put them out, even if you go through the right process to do it. That's happening in Elizabeth, Colorado, just up the street from here.
So there is a real danger here. Of pulling, shall we say, a mission accomplished banner across an Air Force carrier a little bit too soon? If everybody knows that image from President W. Bush, that you declare victory too early on this and you take your eye off the ball. I don't want to do that.
And the reason is twofold. Number one is you see in the blue states what could be possible if the entire government shifts again. And right now, the real stopgap doing things that have kind of permanence are the Supreme Court and certainly not Congress. And the permanent part is not coming from the President because he can't. And that's the part of the system.
The other side of this is that you can't fight a terrible idea just by. dismantling the terrible idea. You have to replace lies with truth. And that happens in culture. And I don't know that we're there yet.
Do we really know what it means to be a male, what it means to be female?
Now, we had this conversation on last week's program. That I think the conversation about young men is starting to happen. I think that Charlie Kirk was a part of that conversation, did a lot to really push. I think Erica Kirk described it. at the memorial services.
trying to save the lost boys of the west. And now you've got A lot of books being written, a lot of sociological study being done. Even popular kind of opinion pieces that would not be publishable. Five years ago in a DEI environment.
Now they are being kind of really wrestled with. Like, have we oversold this? And you have corporate America backpedaling on their policies and kind of rethinking things. And so it is a new day, but there's a lot of work to be done, I guess. My concern is that this is going to become one of those things that people.
will say we were just doing The best that we could at the time with the information that we had. I think that we're already starting to see that argument pop up in some areas. And I think, not for the sake of punishing people, but for the sake of credibility and moving forward with the best. Hermeneutic, I guess, or the best sort of epistemology is to be is to kind of forcefully reiterate that this was never reasonable. And that's important because there will be another movement that is irrational like this, because this is how Pascal described the human condition.
And it's so important that people. have the gumption and the confidence to Stand for truth even when it's the beginning of the push and not the other side of it, like we are on now. Because we are already seeing it. Journalists, especially, this mostly happens in the world of ideas and not so much in the practical world. Like there are doctors and nurses and medical institutions that are going to have to reckon with this, and parents and kids that are going to have to reckon with this in another sort of very real rubber meets the roadway.
And there should be room for personal redemption and forgiveness and restoration while also being held to account. All of that's the case. But in the world of ideas, it is going to be important that we. Are adamant that this was never reasonable. There is no sort of maintaining credibility by saying you were just going along with the best information we had at the time.
Yeah. Well, I'd hesitate saying we're on the other side of it. We are in a different place, but the other side, I think, signifies something else. But, you know, to your point, let's go back. We used this illustration a couple of weeks ago, and I actually talked about this with Dr.
Al Moeller, the president of Southern Seminary, in a conversation we had this week. That's going to air on his podcast in a couple, I don't know, at some point in 2026, probably. Remember, we talked about the interview that Ross Stalfett had with Chase, is it Strangio, I think is the name? the attorney for the ACLU in the Scrametti case. The Scrimetti cases, when they really argued about whether or not a state could ban these harmful treatments.
for miners and Really, to Ross Dalthitt's credit, they covered a lot of ground in that interview. Including, like, how do you think about this entire issue? And where is the medicine? Where's the science and all that sort of stuff? And to your point, and by the way, he made the same point, if you can get past the voice.
and what this sounds like. And that kind of like I it just something's wrong here. There's nothing there. There's not an argument there. And this is, I mean, you know, in terms of maybe it's not a medical professional, but this is the person chosen to argue in front of the Supreme Court this side.
And there's no there there. There's no substance there. There's not an argument there. There is a. Basically, the same sort of gaslighting that was always there, which is if you don't agree with this.
Well, first of all, the science is settled without ever pointing to any science that is settled or scientists that settled it. other than a bunch of self-appointed experts outside of the realm. And also, that if you don't believe it, you're a bigot. I mean, that's basically where it all came down. And you just realize, yeah, there's not a there there.
And nobody wants to be on the wrong side of history, especially if you're a progressive and you think that that's all there is, is the right or wrong. You know, you just think history is headed in this long arc. And if you thought you were on the right side and now you think you're on the wrong side, I mean, that's a really tough place to be on. If you don't have a narrative of human fallenness and so on.
So I think all that's going to shape. Shape this conversation going forward. I just. May maybe I'm a pessimist and Or whatever. I'm trying to be a realist.
I'm not sure we're on the other side as much as. My hope comes when medical folks back down. You know, when more and more parents and so on are willing to stand up, when more and more businesses are being public about it. All and more and more celebrities. All that's good news.
So there's good signs. But there's more to come on that one. Let's talk about AI. We got to talk about AI. I mean, it'd be crazy to talk about 2025 and not mention.
you know again the advances now are happening in in a hurry The capacity and the ability of our technologies to replace human effort in a lot of ways. And I was looking at a couple summaries of the AI story of 2025, and some of them even want to talk about the advance of. The emotion in AI. Which you just kind of go, uh, that's not the word I'd use, but go on. That's a weird, uh, that's a weird thing to talk about.
AI is advancing if it becomes more emotional, I guess. I don't know. That's a. That's an odd thing. I'm not even sure that's true, but the potential and power of the technology is.
really hard to question. I think we can both oversell it. And undersell it? And we have examples of both of those things.
So, yeah.
So, when we were, my husband and I were talking about this last night, and we sufficiently scared our daughter. Uh one of the things we brought up was You know, our best friends live Across the country, and we remain very close to them, and we see them. Fairly often. And we were kind of telling our daughter, like, without the technology that we have now, and arguably with the technology that existed when I was a kid, this relationship wouldn't have been as possible or as feasible. And that's something to be thankful for.
So, I imagine there are going to be things that will describe that AI will. accomplish that will be will have changed the way we look at life. in possibly good ways and certainly bad ways. I don't know that we see it. I mean, I think professors and teachers would probably be the people I hear from the most who say they're seeing the impacts of AI on culture most prominently because of the way students are using it.
But do you do you see it in a way that feels potent to you? Or is it more like the are you thinking more about the implications of it and the philosophical changes that you know the way it could change the way we think about work and we think about what it is to be human that you're more concerned about?
Well, it's always the human question. I mean, I think that has is always the question with technology, even even really before you start settling down on moral boundaries. You have to have your ontological categories down. And you know, one of the things about Postmodernism is that the postmodern, and again, I'm talking about really high-level kind of philosophical things. But it has real-life implications.
This is when you realize that some folks, like Schaefer, got it right. Even if they, you know, kind of cut corners on how to get there. But the point is, is that. The conversation was really about what exists, what's real, what's true, what's, you know, and so on. And then the postmodern conversation took what as a couple folks called, an epistemological turn.
Right. In other words, it became less about what's real and more about centering everything, including. Reality on the knower? What can we know? And then, you know, we can't really know anything.
And so then it goes from epistemology really to an emotionalism, right? You get. You kind of give up ever thinking you can access what is actually there. And so all the attention goes on: what are the things that are affecting how you know? And then that becomes, you know, social conditioning.
It becomes, you know, oppression. It becomes narratives of all kinds of different. Thanks. And this is one of the places you really see this kind of flesh out where we jump to. Uh questions.
Before really establishing what is true about the human condition, what makes humans human. Uh how do we know what humans are? And we have to get that right. I was really. Struck early in 2025.
We did a Well, we've done a couple different conversations about AI. We've got a couple others coming up here in the new year, but. One including our Bay Harbor event in the middle of July this year will be centered around AI. But ask someone who actually invests and has business is really working in that area. And you know, what are you doing with your own kids?
And he said, I want them to be really good at relationships. Because, you know, the if you kind of get to the heart of how technology has interfered with our humanness or Our extra. exaggerated our fallenness in any way. It it it it's because we forgot who our friends can be, right? You know, a disconnected, disembodied like on a Facebook post, which dates back now 25, 30 years.
It started to become a A fantasy. That I have this many friends because I have this many friends on Facebook. It's only gotten worse as our technologies have gotten quicker and more convenient and shorter and more stunted and all that. And where does it all rest? Who are we?
How do we think about other people? Do we realize that we are made in the image of God? And to be made in the image of the Trinity is to be relational because God's a relationship, and you got to be really good at relationships. Oh, by the way, the foundation or the summary of all the moral commands that the Bible has is relational. Love God, love others.
And so you got to do relationships well. And so the question always is, what does it mean to be human? This is also going to help us not just in the relational side of things and whether or not we should marry robots, but also in our question about Um work. And whether efficiency, a value that comes primarily through technology, is always better. More efficient is always better.
I'm grateful for an entrepreneur that I know, wonderful business leader who talks about intentional inefficiencies, that to be fully human and to obey God in the work that he does as someone who is very successful in a lot of different industries, He bakes in intentional inefficiencies because that value system as a Christian has to be somewhat different. And I think that kind of thing only becomes exaggerated. With AI, right? People fear about the loss of work.
Well, what is human work? How do we know what? Human work should be. And we've already been confused about that, right?
So, all these technologies usually exaggerate the confusions that are already there.
So, let's go back, gentlemen. This is a football, you know, the whole. What's his name? Vince Lombardi. Vince Lombardi.
I think it was G.K. Chesterton who said that. It was Chesterton. Yeah. That's right.
So, um, yeah. No, I love, I love what you said about relationships. That I think is the takeaway. I mean, that, and that's what I loved about what Charlie said. That's what I meant earlier by saying he talked about making a purpose for yourself.
I didn't mean like creating one out of ex Neilio, like just anything can be your purpose. I meant. Make yourself useful to other people by being useful for them. Like, pour yourself out for other people. You know, that's the way we were built, that's what we were built for.
And that's what relationships are for. That's the other thing that technology has robbed us of, not just giving us this kind of weird surface-level vision of what. relationships are for us, but also what we owe other people. And, you know, that's, it's a, it's a paradox, I guess, if you want to look at self-sacrifices. only from your own point of view, but You find the most meaning and satisfaction in life by laying yourself down for other people.
And that's the way that's because we are relational people. And that's the point. That's how we accomplish what we need. Even as it's hard.
Well, along those lines, I think another headline and a related headline, at least to the last things we were talking about, is this. We alluded to it earlier, but specifically the increased conversation about young men and maybe somewhat of a push to a return to masculinity. And part of that has to do with a rejection of DEI. There has been a pretty sound rejection of DEI. And that's taking multiple forms.
But I think it's also important on the relational side of things, and just watching the clock here, the time tick away. Um there was some notable Deaths this year. There's always notable deaths because that's life. But specifically in the Christian world, John MacArthur. Je Jim Dobson.
and Bodhi Bakham.
Now These were very outspoken. Voices of conservative evangelical thought, particularly as it has to do with.
some of these issues of sexuality and race and and and that sort of stuff. But especially for MacArthur and Dobson. You know We're now What is it? you know, thirteen years, over thirteen years after the death of Chuck Colson. You have the Charles Stanleys and you have the D.
James Kennedys. The Jerry Falwells. There were there were some larger than life figures of Uh A previous generation of evangelicalism at a time when evangelical leadership emerged in the United States as being extremely, extremely powerful. And many have talked about. That generation passing on.
You could also put Tim Keller in that list, although he was a little bit younger than some of those others, but in terms of his influence. And a lot of questions remain about, you know, what does this mean in terms of leadership? Obviously, the death of Charlie Kirk fits that category, but he was a completely different generation. How he died was completely different. And, but that is a notable development.
And when you think about kind of the leaders of the last generation and You have a prominent public pastor like John MacArthur. You have a prominent social leader like Jim Dobson. you have a uh a a a prominent Uh just spokesperson like Bodhi Bockham, and you put that in line of You know, Billy Graham, not that long ago, the most prominent evangelist maybe in American history. A chuck colson, a prominent again. Christian voice in the public square.
And a lot of people notice. You look around and you say, Who fills their shoes? Who can take their place? I don't know Dead. our particular cultural moment will will have that kind of leader anymore.
I think that's worth asking. Uh I think that There's been a push to localism.
Sometimes that can look like and become tribalism, which is an abuse of that. But there's also hopefully a push towards Not outsourcing all of our responsibilities to a few celebrities and, you know, kind of moving in a different direction. And at the same time though, recognizing That These men were statesmen. And That's really something. Is that an you know You don't even really think of our politicians as being statesmen.
Who's a great statesman in America and has been in the last. 30, you know. You don't it's it's hard to even fill that in any category of American or Western culture.
Well, and of course, Pope Francis died this year. It's a a big development as well. Yeah, I mean, that's that it you're I mean, yeah, and that's already had some consequences here just recently. First American Pope? Yeah, first American Pope and so on.
Yeah, I mean he obviously didn't have that kind of the history even The way that John Paul II, or somebody, you know, decades and decades and decades of statesmanship and was willing to do that. And Francis didn't really have that same reputation, but it's certainly a notable death of 2025. Yeah. Well, I want to talk about some notable media maybe that you and I consumed this year. But before we do that, John, did you change this year?
How have you changed in 2025? Less hair, worse cholesterol. I don't know. There's a number of things. My son is a little older, and so I have different injuries.
Then 2024, this is actually not a joke.
So new nagging injuries that have to do with. A whole lot of fun, which is playing basketball together, but and a little baseball.
So. Those are all things. No, the Colson Center definitely changed. My kids are getting older. I'm the dad of college students.
You become a different kind of parent, and that all is part of it. Learning from. Fr from others. Thankfully, God's brought a lot of those folks into our life that we can learn from. Really interesting.
At this age, there becomes different concerns having daughters. And those concerns emerge. And so you, you know, start playing that role, which is interesting. But I'm really grateful. I think the project Truth Rising was a clarifying thing for our entire organization.
The truth rising. Question is: What is it like to be in a what does it mean to be called to a civilizational moment? It's the question of how then shall we live and how now shall we live that Chuck and Francis Schaefer asked. And that requires a To some extent, defining the now. What is the now that we live in?
What is the cultural moment? And that is a big theme for us. And is it as dramatic as Osgenis has described? And I think he made a wonderful case for it in the film. I think he talked to a lot of other individuals that made a case for it.
And we were also able to kind of settle down and say, okay, well, this is what it means. We're not in this moment by accident, we're here because God. Called us here. To sum up then, the Christian worldview essentials that We can look back and thank Chuck Colson for and Francis Schaefer and some of these, the Dell Tacketts of the world, and thank them for the work that they did. in wrestling with this kind of framing up of what it means to have a public faith.
and the full implications of Christian truth for the wider And so Wrestling through that was part of this project. Going through that's a big part of the study, the curriculum. And honestly, we've reframed our entire organization around. Hope, truth, identity, and calling. That that really when we talk about what it means to have a Committed faith to the essentials of Christian truth and how that should play out in our public lives.
First of all, we're people of hope, not of despair. Secondly, we're not just people of truths, we're people of a true story of the world. This is the world we live in, created by God, huge conflict in contemporary culture and also redeemable because of Christ. And that is a huge conflict, right, with other worldviews. And then identity, half the stories we talked about, all the stories we talked about somewhere touch image of God or our forgetfulness of who we are made in the image of God.
And then seeing life as a calling. that we're not pursuing safety we're not pursuing Uh you know just uh wealth or accumulation, but we're we've been called. And that calling is attached to meaning. You know, I mean, all this stuff is what we talked about, but honestly, and I'm not just giving a commercial here, although it probably sounds like that. This has been profound for us.
It's been profound for us as an organization. and this is our tenth year, by the way, as an independent organization. set set a set apart from Prison FileShift w where was where we were uh birthed out of with by by Chuck. We look back to the sorts of groundwork he laid for us and then where we're headed. And we did an awful lot of defining this year.
So, yes, that's how we're different. That's probably more than you wanted to know, but it really matters. I love it. Yeah. You?
My life is funny. Uh obviously most of the people who Listen to Breakpoint this week, know me through Breakpoint this week, but I feel like. I outside of this venue, I lead a very small life in a way that I love. My primary role and how I see myself is As a mom. And I think I feel the same way you did, which is that I'm in a different season of parenting.
And that feels funny to say your daughters are in college, minor. Still in elementary school, but I don't have babies anymore. And so the problems are different and the logistics are different. And my concerns are different. And some of that's fun and some of it's challenging.
But that's, I would say, yeah, that's the most of the way my life has changed. And also, just it's always just so clarifying being a parent and maybe being a mom in particular is clarifying because. That's the primary role I play, and it's the one that's by far the most important to me, being that and being Aaron's wife. And so. Just leaning into those roles this year has been great.
and illuminating and fun and rewarding and hard and all those things. Um, do you want to just run through really quickly some media that you loved, hated, thought were important this year? Books, movies, songs? I don't know. What do you do in the Anglican church?
Hymns? Yeah. There I think there's a lot of really interesting things. One is a a book that Put a lot of things together for me. It's not out yet, but I was privileged to get.
see it ahead of time and and also uh Write an endorsement from the one and only Carl Truman.
So I'm looking forward to more people. Wrestling with this. And it has a little bit to do with the disenchantment and re-enchantment. Conversation we had earlier in the program and kind of the phenomenon of what he calls desecration. In other words, that that there is this stage in which Just Ignoring or walking away from the supernatural is not enough.
When you're really rebellious, you actually have to seek to desecrate. And we see that in policy with doctor-assisted suicide and transgender surgeries. We see it also in personal lives and. kind of having to be rebellious and and and you know the The number of articles that we continue to read from young women who leave their husbands and in order to have a sexual adventure or whatever. There's just multiple forms of desecration.
So it's a wonderful category and I think it's going to put a lot of things together.
So that was a profound read here and most recently. And also, I think that there have been some really important conversations. We've kind of been on a tear recommending Ross Douthett's podcast. I think he's doing a tremendous job over there, having really long. Conversations with people who matter, but doing it in a way that both listens and challenges.
He's got a unique gift in that way. And so I'll say those are a couple of things that. were were pretty uh helpful to me. Um And 2025. Those are great.
And so, yeah, there's some others I could mention. Yeah. Well, I'm going to go a little bit of a less serious route, although I appreciate both of those. First, I just have to recommend Nellie Bowles' TGIF column that she does at the Free Press every Friday. It is absolute gold.
Sasha Seinfeld is now helping her write it. It's basically a news roundup, but very creative and funny. To the point where my husband and my two best friends do not read it intentionally, and I. Record a voice memo of myself reading it and send it to them because I just laugh my way through it, and then we have a ton of fun talking about it afterwards. I can't recommend it enough.
And you get, you know, you get a rundown of the headlines. But I think it's very healthy emotionally to be able to laugh even when things seem really, really. Dire, and she has a unique way of doing that, where not necessarily taking stories lightly, but kind of pointing out just the Glory and Garbage of the Universe. I also really loved the new Mumford and Sons album this year. It's called Rushmere.
Marcus Mumford was the, his dad was a pastor with Vineyard.
So he grew up sort of in LA, but also in England, I think half and half. And loves T.S. Eliot, and you can hear that in a ton of his lyrics. Just a fascinating person and writing. I don't know that he would call himself a professing Christian, certainly not.
Professing any kind of orthodoxy that we would recognize. But Aaron and I got a chance to see them in concert as well, which was really fun. They're just extremely talented and A great band, and I loved their they hadn't come out with a new album, I think, in like 10 years.
So I love that album. It's called Rushmere. Um, I think that is all the time we have for our kind of 2025 recap. Is there any major developments you are gonna be watching for in 2026? Just don't tell me about basketball because I yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see if uh.
How good uh Cameron Boozer can be uh for the Duke Blue Devils. That is a ridiculous name. Why do all these people have these names? Isn't there a b somebody named that's a Duke royalty name, honestly.
So it's going to be interesting to see what happens in college basketball. No, I do think that the trend line hopefully is a trend line towards clarity because I do think we have these. Mixed reviews. And part of it is we have more information than we have had in the past. We have a wider purview.
We have the news cycle in which things seem permanent when they're not. And things seem temporary when they're actually trend lines, and it's hard to discern the difference. We've seen that, I think, in the quiet revival, vibe shift kind of thing. And in fact, in one way, almost all the stories we talked about were various. Breakoffs of whatever people can call their vibe shift.
You know, how are we thinking about this, that, or the other? And what's that mean? But I I think the the largest trend is How will the church respond? There's a remarkable level of opportunity around young men, around A re-enchantment. Also, the ongoing need, the relevance model, the constantly.
Trying to be relevant to a changing culture. I think. That has basically proven to have failed. And instead. The Be weird, stay, you know, stay weird that Tom Holland talked about.
That's going to be how does the church embrace that or not embrace that?
So, that to me is, I think, what we'll, I'll be watching, at least right now, but you have to ask me at the end of 2026 and maybe. Who knows what will have happened? We should come back and listen to this episode at the end of 2020. Yeah, that would be exactly. I mean, sometimes, yeah, I kind of think of what we talked about last year.
I was like, That is so unimportant. What on earth? I know. Yeah. Well, John, that is all the time we have.
And maybe we don't say this enough, but I know you and I both are so grateful for the people who spend the end of the week with us each week and listen to Breakpoint this week and who, you know, the ongoing ministry really of Chuck Colson and of the team at the Coulson Center has impacted. I know I'm really grateful for this organization and. I'm thankful to everybody who has listened and continues to listen and writes in. We just appreciate you and appreciate this opportunity. We don't take it lightly.
So I hope you've had a wonderful year and on behalf of the Coulson Center and John Stone Street, I'm Maria Baer wishing you a great 2026. And we'll see you all back here next week. God bless.
