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Breakpoint
2025 Year in Review; Charlie Kirk, Antisemitism, Resurgence of Islam, AI and the Vibe Shift
01:08:02
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- [00:02]
A
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 Gonna 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. Looking forward into next year episode of Breakpoint this week from the Coulson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet, 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?
- [01:07]
B
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 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, 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 want to 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's like that to us. Culture normalizes things. But there are moments in which we get hit by a cultural wave. And sometimes the sea is a lot more rocky and rough 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 there could dramatically be changing the landscape, that could be working in much slower ways to 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. The brakes 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 health care 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 in 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 is 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 vulnerable and fragile we are 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. 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 10 years ago. You know, even the rise of the. Remember, the biggest religion story many years in a row was the rise of the nuns. The N o N ease. Well, Ryan Burge suggests that that numbers kind of say consistent, but it hasn't spiked like it has a 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.
- [05:39]
A
Last night, we were in the car with our daughters, and Aaron and I were talking about AI. He had just done a really fascinating interview, and my oldest daughter started asking us a question. 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.
- [06:02]
B
I mean, that's brutal.
- [06:04]
A
This fault lies with Aaron and I. It's because we were. We were talking specifically about how tech has absolutely overtaken the classroom and how there was really no evidence that this was gonna be good. And actually, the 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, but it led to this really sweet conversation where we were like, nothing about this is unique. 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 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, but it's also really hard for these reasons. But it was a really. It was a good 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 antisemitism. And maybe not even just the antisemitism itself, but the normalization of it. So in 2014, I went to Kiev, and 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 Babi Yar, which is this site a little bit outside of the city, where 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 Babi Yarn. So it's rising anti Semitism. Absolutely. We, everybody has seen the violence, but also the normalization of it feels like a big story.
- [09:05]
B
Yeah, that is a big story. And it's. We saw it in multiple different, you know, situations, including earlier this year in Colorado here in the US 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 race or a kind of a walk, maybe a benefit walk for Jewish people in Boulder, Colorado. And we, of course, had the tail end of 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 antisemitism. And it's happening, I think, interestingly enough, at a lot of the same time, because historically, obviously, there's been Muslim sources of antisemitism and anti Semitic violence even. We've also seen it from the left. We've seen it since the October 7 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 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 really creates this. I was listening to another podcast this week, and 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 stories about six or seven things that are really positive. And then you got three or four things here emerging in the story of antisemitism in 2025. And certainly it predates it, but it hit a new crescendo, right? This is certainly a real wave 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 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 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 you know, to international politics. My point is, 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 attempts to even exterminate the, 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 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 Ian Hirsi Ali 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 Rodrier 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.
- [15:22]
A
Yeah, I wonder if like all of human history, if you looked back, that it just always is going, that 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 Agey 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 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?
- [16:11]
B
Yeah, it's a good question. I do think by the way, the waffling between secularism and religious views maybe hasn't been pendulum like. And I think it is uniquely the west because of the growth of science and so on. Os 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 a 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, maybe underestimated 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, 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 Covid as if there were pre existing conditions that brought about its worth, consequence that brought about its worst consequences, both health wise and culturally speaking, like there were things in the water way ahead. 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? 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 Oz now here twice in A. In 10 minutes or 5 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 in certain aspects than others or in 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. So 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 Rod Dreher writes about and Living in Wonder, in which he talks about a little bit about people returning to church and. 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.
- [20:13]
A
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.
- [20:24]
B
You're just importing Vibe into everything. Just for the record.
- [20:26]
A
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 welco. 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 that 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 did you last read that?
- [21:15]
B
Oh, no, it's been a while. I mean. And he was wrestling primarily with the biggest. The big movements.
- [21:20]
A
The Cold War kind of era.
- [21:22]
B
Yeah, the 20th century ones. Yeah. No question.
- [21:24]
A
It's fascinating. 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 that can be for both good or ill. And I think one of the reasons people hopefully are turning back towards the church or towards religion generally is that they're searching for purpose. And I'm gonna connect this in a little way to Charlie Kirk, and I want to talk to you that story next.
- [21:54]
B
Tickets are nearly sold out for the 2026 Colson Center National Conference this May in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you want to be there, now is the time to claim your spot. Our theme is you are here. We'll think about what it looks like to live out our Christian calling in this cultural moment with the help of amazing speakers like Os Guinness, Claire Morell, Frank Turek, Chloe Cole, and more. As a Christian, you're here to do more than exist or survive. You can be confident you're called to this moment for God's purpose. Register now@colsonconference.org that's colsonconference.org.
- [22:29]
A
That was one of the big things Charlie was calling for towards the end of his life was he was telling people, specifically young men, go to church, get married, build a family, find purpose, not just find purpose or. 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 that he was murdered, but his death and sort of the attention that it brought to his message, changed American culture.
- [23:08]
B
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 personal responsibility. And I want to be the Charlie, we're all Charlie kind of thing. And 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 it's token May. Yeah, maybe it's. Maybe it's one of those others. But no, I'm pretty sure this one was Chesterton where he talked about that the. The 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. That he represented. And they're. They're yelling at each other, they're. 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. That human. The human ability to corrupt things and to mess things up and to steal, you know, take defeat from the jaws of victory. You know, that sort of thing is on display specifically 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 how can anyone. 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 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 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 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 murder. And you can see it, you know, from the younger Charlie to the older Charlie to your point of the story, the older 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 Orne of Hillsdale College mentioned at the memorial service that Charlie had done 31 of those Hillsdale courses. 31. I mean, not a couple, 31. 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 in how he shared his faith on college campuses and how he did apologetics and how he answered skeptics and cynics. And he was also being mentored in foreign policy and international things. And, and you know, those are areas that were very complex for his age and so on. And he, he realized that at some level there had been. And I don't want to make this just a eulogy about him, but when you look at the older he got, the more he addressed with the young men, the question of meaning in particular, not just young men. So when he was telling young men, 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, he, 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, ask people out, get married, have babies. Yeah. And, and, and, 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 Boys had happened. A detachment from meaning.
- [29:05]
A
I think another part of that, of his murder is, you know, it certainly changed. I think this is part of why this felt like a 911 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 a. But we're beyond that. It's like after World War I, nobody thought World War II was possible at all. So in some sense it was always possible. But this is another big story of the year is 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.
- [30:00]
B
Year was that that wasn't last year.
- [30:02]
A
I think it was this year, John.
- [30:04]
B
Okay. I mean obviously it carried on. I just thought it was before that.
- [30:08]
A
Yeah.
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B
But I also thought the California wildfires were not 2025, but they were.
- [30:12]
A
That was. Yikes. Okay. But then this year there was the murder of the state legislatures in Minnesota. That happened this year as well. 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, but even among the protesting of Israel. And that's of course another main news story of this year is the negotiation of the deal between ISRA and Hamas, the somewhat dismantling of the nuclear program in Iran, the return of the hostages to Israel. But getting back to this political violence point and the normalization point. But 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. This is a big story too yeah.
- [31:11]
B
And I think that was the kind of the tempestuous waters that. 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 Mangione killing of the. Of Brian Thompson was in December 2024. So basically the trial and everything else carried out this year and all the reaction. But we. We did see. I. I think we. This is part of the story of the normalization of. Of political violence. 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 started to respect him. He was so aspirational. In other words, 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 I think there is something about those kind of aspirational lives. And there were a few folks who likened what he was doing and the kind of life he was trying to live and the kind of difference he was trying to make. And the death he had 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 and 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. But here we are at the end of 2025, and 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 as friends, but people trying to hijack this in one way or the other. And so it does. To me, it's Pascal. It's all in Pascal. Read Ponce'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 Colson Center. As we approach the end of the year, I want to thank you for standing with us in this mission. Because of your generosity, countless believers are being equipped with a strong biblical worldview. And that work continues into 2026. Did you know there are ways to give beyond cash or check? Many partners choose to give through stock securities or a donor advised fund, which can also provide tax benefits. Every gift, no matter the form, helps us share truth and hope in a culture that desperately needs it. If you'd like to make this kind of gift, please ensure it reaches us by December 31st. Just email us at advancementolsencenter.org that's advancement@colsoncenter.org thank you for making this kingdom work possible. From all of us at the Colson center, have a blessed and merry Christmas.
- [34:59]
A
Well, John, let's shift and talk about where exactly are we. You referenced this briefly, but I think another big story this year, as 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 minors. 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? 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 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?
- [36:23]
B
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, okay, we're not going to hurt children anymore. But 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 way, fact 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, you know, 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. And 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 of the Supreme Court, and it's 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 5 years ago in a DEI environment now 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.
- [39:39]
A
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 describes 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. There are doctors and nurses and medical institutions that are gonna have to reckon with this, and parents and kids that are gonna have to reckon with this in another sort of very real rubber meets the road way. 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 gonna 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.
- [41:17]
B
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 use this illustration a couple weeks ago, and I actually talked about this with Dr. Al Mohler, 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 Stout had had with Chase. Is it Strangio, I think is the name. The attorney for the ACLU in the Scremetti case, the Scarmetti case, is when they really argued about whether or not a state could ban these harmful treatments for minors. And really to Ross Douthat'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 and 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 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, 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 none of 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 and so on. So I think all that's going to shape, shape this conversation going forward. I just, 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, when more and more parents and so on are willing to stand up, when more and more businesses are being public about it 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 a hurry. The, 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.
- [44:34]
A
That'S not the word I'd use, but go on.
- [44:36]
B
That's a weird, that's a weird thing to talk about. AI's 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.
- [45:01]
A
Yeah, so when we were. My husband and I were talking about this last night and we sufficiently scared our daughter, 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, 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 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?
- [46:19]
B
Well, it's always the human question. I mean, I think that is always the question with technology, even really before you start settling down on moral boundaries, you have to have your ontological categories down. And 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 Schaeffer got it right, even if they kind of cut corners on how to get there. But the point is that the conversation was really about what exists, what's real, what's true, and so on. And then the postmodern conversation took what as a couple folks called an epistemological turn. 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 what. 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. 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 things. And this is one of the places you really see this kind of flesh out where you. We jump to questions before really establishing what is true about the human condition. What makes humans human? 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 I asked someone who actually invests and has businesses, is really working in that area, what are you doing with your own kids? And he said, I want them to be really good at relationships. Because if you kind of get to the heart of how technology has interfered with our humanness or exaggerated our fallenness in any way, it's because we forgot who our friends can be, right? 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, you know, whether or not we should marry robots, but also in our question about work and whether efficiency, a value that comes primarily through technology, is always better. You know, 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?
- [50:38]
A
Vince Lombardi.
- [50:39]
B
Vince Lombardi.
- [50:40]
A
I think it was GK Chesterton who said that.
- [50:42]
B
It was Chesterton. Yeah, that's right.
- [50:46]
A
So, yeah, I love what you said about relationships. That I think is the takeaway. I mean, 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 creating one out of ex nihilio. Just anything can be your purpose. I meant make yourself useful to other people by being useful for them. 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.
- [51:50]
B
Well, along those lines, I think another headline and a related headline, at least to the last things we're 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. There was some notable deaths this year. There's always notable deaths because that's life. But specifically in the Christian world, John MacArthur, Jim Dobson and Voddie Bauckham. 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 that sort of stuff. But especially for MacArthur and Dobson, you know, we're now what is it where you know, 13 years, over 13 years after the death of Chuck Colson, you have the Charles Stanley's and you have the D. James Kennedys, the Jerry Falwell's, There were, there were some larger than life figures of 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 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. 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 prominent just spokesperson like Bodie Bauckham. And you put that in line of 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 that our particular cultural moment will have that kind of leader anymore. I think that's worth asking. 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, 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, it's hard to even fill that in any category of American or Western culture.
- [55:32]
A
Well, and of course, Pope Francis died this year. This is a big development as well.
- [55:36]
B
Yeah, I mean. Yeah, and that's already had some consequences here just recently.
- [55:41]
A
First American Pope.
- [55:43]
B
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. Francis didn't really have that same reputation, but it's certainly a notable death of 2025. Yeah.
- [56:01]
A
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?
- [56:12]
B
Less hair, worse cholesterol? I don't know. There's a number. There's a number of things. I'm, I, I, I had a. My son is a little older, and so I have different injuries than 2024. This is actually not a joke. So I have new nagging injuries that have to do with a whole lot of fun, which is, you know, 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. I'm learning 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 start playing that role, which is interesting, but I'm really grateful. I think the project of 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 Schaeffer asked. And that requires 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 Osginis 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 Schaeffer and some of these, the Dell tackets 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. The wider scope of life. 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 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, you know, just wealth or accumulation, but we've been called, and that calling is attached to meaning. So, you know, I mean, all this stuff is what we talked about. But honestly, and I'm not just, you know, giving a commercial here, though it probably sounds like that this has been profound for us. It's been profound for us as an organization. And this is our 10th year, by the way, as an independent organization set apart from Prison Fellowship, where it was where we were birthed out of with 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.
- [60:22]
A
I love it. Yeah.
- [60:23]
B
You.
- [60:25]
A
My life is funny. Obviously, most of the people who listen to Breakpoint this week know me through Breakpoint this week, but I feel like 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. Mine are 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 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 Erin'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. 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?
- [61:48]
B
Yeah, I think there's a lot of really interesting things. One is 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 also 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 there's 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 the number of articles that we continue to read from young women who leave their husbands 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. 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 Douthat'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 things that were pretty helpful to me in 2025.
- [63:31]
A
Those are great.
- [63:32]
B
And so, yeah, there's some others I could mention.
- [63:34]
A
But yeah, well, I'm gonna 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 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 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 TS 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 Erin 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. 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.
- [65:20]
B
I. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see if how good Cameron Boozer can be for the Duke doubles.
- [65:27]
A
That is a ridiculous name. Why do all these people have these names? Isn't there a somebody that's a.
- [65:32]
B
That's a. That's a Duke royalty name, honestly. So this is 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. Towards clarity because I Do think, you know, 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. The news cycle in which things seem permanent when they're not. And thing things seem temporary when they're actually trend lines. And it's hard to discern the difference. And 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 break offs of whatever people can call the vibe shift. You know, how we, how are we thinking about this, that or the other? And what's that mean? But I think 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, you know, ongoing need, the relevance model that, you know, constantly trying to be relevant to a changing culture, I think that has basically proven to have failed. And instead the be weird, 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 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.
- [67:06]
A
We should come back and listen to this episode at the end of 2016.
- [67:10]
B
Sometimes. Yeah. I kind of think of what we talked about last year. I was like, that is so unimportant.
- [67:14]
A
What on earth. I know.
- [67:15]
B
Yeah.
- [67:16]
A
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 Colson center has impacted. I know. I'm really grateful for this organization. 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 had a wonderful year. And on behalf of the Coulson center and Johnstonestreet, I'm Maria Baer wishing you a great 2026 and we'll see you all back here next week. God bless.