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Breakpoint
Canada School Shooter, Trump's Meme, the Super Bowl Halftime Shows and Something Big is Coming
01:09:05
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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to breakpoint this Week where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian perspective. Today, we're going to talk about violence in Canada. We're also going to talk about that meme that President Trump shared on social media and about the racist history that our country has to reckon with. We're so glad you're with us. Stick around. Welcome to breakpoint this week from the Coulson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet, president of the Coulson Center. Well, John, this week we need to start on a tough note. News broke just a few days ago of another school shooting. This time it was in Canada, in a rural community just north of Vancouver. As far as we know, nine people were killed, including two people at a home nearby, which I believe were the family members of the shooter. What kind of adds to the tragedy and the confusion of this story is this is now another example of a shooting by a person who was identifying as trans. And I will say that I noticed that almost immediately because one of the first news stories I saw said the shooter is believed to be a woman. And I thought there is almost no way that that is the case because we just know statistically women do not commit mass violence in this way. And sure enough, after more digging, I started to see stories saying this was a gun person and this was a gun person wearing a dress. And sure enough, we now know that it was a male shooter who identified as female.
- [01:35]
B
I think there's only been one female shooter, which was the Covenant School in Nashville. Right. She was identifying as male or non binary. And, you know, I remember, what, 10 years ago or so when we talked about some of these shootings and we were talking about how there's not really a common thread. It's hard to know. These are kind of random acts of violence. And many of them were. And then, you know, you start seeing, okay, well, the, the thing that you can know is that they're going to be male and they're mostly going to be young men. And the only one I think that didn't at the time fall into that category was Las Vegas, which was an older man. And that's like, no one knows about that one. That's still one of the weirdest. Like, why, why have the details of that gone so silent for so long? But that's, that's a whole nother conspiracy theorists show, I guess, that we can do at some point in the future. In recent days, it's almost expected Honestly, that the mental illness that we pointed to with throughout the whole, you know, series of mass shootings, that the mental illness, one of the comorbidities is going to be a gender confusion, it's going to be a transgender ideology. So, I mean, that's the thing. Now we have another one. And now we have gone beyond anecdotes to data, to a series of acts of mass violence committed by people who do have this mental illness. We have been gaslit for the last decade or so that it's not a mental illness. And yet what we have seen is that it's comorbidity. It's a mental illness, comorbidity, along with a whole lot of others, anxiety, schizophrenia, autism. Steve Gursevich, who has spoken for us on a number of occasions on this issue, including in a webinar, I think, beginning of last year and at our national conference two years ago, went through the data and it was just stunning to me when you see kind of the commonalities here. And then let's go back to the story we talked about last week, which was good news, the jury decision to help Varian Fox and to find the hospital guilty of malpractice in her situation. And what were the three things that came up. We talked about this first, that there were. And one of the three things we talked about was that she had comorbidities that were ignored and ignored and then just ushered through. So I guess what I'm saying is that there's now more and more and more and more evidence that this is indeed a mental disorder, as if it should have ever been up in the air. It should not have been. So that's the first thing that comes to my mind. Now we're at the plurality of anecdotes. And so we're heading into the. There's a trend line here that needs to be looked at and needs to be studied carefully because there's just too many examples. Not just men who identify as women or young men who identify as women, but non binary, just an identity crisis, a manifestation of the identity crisis. The first story that I saw out of this came out of the Telegraph, which immediately referred to this person as a trans shooter and used a he pronoun. And I thought, oh, well, that is not what you don't see from media outlets. And of course, that's not the same thing as the Guardian. And I wonder if CNN backed off. Maybe they just did get some initial information. They're still calling he or she even now.
- [05:12]
A
No, CNN is still doing it. CNN Is. And AP and Reuters are still referring to the shooter as a woman.
- [05:18]
B
I mean, that's really remarkable. I, I saw that the Australian news outlet covered the story and even on Twitter, like turned off comments so that no one could disagree, you know, with it. And it is so, you know, such an obvious reality. I think that there's a trend line that needs to be investigated. We know that five to one young people who are identifying as trans or young women, adolescent and pre adolescent, who have a hatred of themselves. But it seems to be emerging that the majority of young men identifying as women have a hatred of themselves and others. And it's. And it expresses an incidence like this. I mean, look, I'll take the small wins. And we've had a whole bunch, a string of small wins of people just pushing back on this, people refusing to go along with this. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal that was just sent to me here as we began to record about breaking the code of silence on gender medicine, talking about how obvious it has been that gender transitions for minors were a bad idea.
- [06:25]
A
Is this Louise Perry?
- [06:26]
B
No, it's not. It's James Miggs. But it's. But, you know, it goes to something that is worth talking about with Louise Perry and Abigail Schreier and Ryan Anderson and ADF clients and courageous moms in Michigan and Wisconsin and other places, which. This was an example of something that Chuck Colson was fascinated with actually the year he passed away. We did a conference in 2012, the Wilberforce weekend Conference on the spiral silence. And basically this is a phrase that was coined to explain what happened in Germany, where a lot of people knew Hitler was crazy, but the pressure to conform was so great. If you can add social cost to that pressure and if you can add criminal costs, which they did as well, there's just. And you can get a whole bunch of different people on board. And we've talked about, you know, kind of dividing culture up into segments and say, well, which segment is still standing? And there was one at one point. There weren't very many segments still standing. The only segment that maybe hadn't fully gotten on board was the church one, but the church one had been cowed into silence in a lot of ways. And so what did it take? It takes the breaking of the silence. One person breaking the silence gives courage to the others. And so that's where this story is. It's fascinating. I was telling somebody this past week, we were talking about Breakpoint and the sorts of things we do here in our conversations each week. And they were like, you guys just have so much to talk about. I'm like, look, it would be super interesting if we weren't talking about issues of such incredible importance for actual people. And this is an example of that, that people still today are. Major news outlets are trying to hoist this stuff on all of us. It's just. It's just bizarre.
- [08:22]
A
But this is why it's so important, too. I mean, this should be so obvious as to go without saying, but I feel like it needs saying. One of the reasons it's so important that these news outlets are doing this is that when you're talking about incidents of mass violence, among other things, you want to be able to recognize patterns. And you talked about the patterns we've recognized. It's usually young men. There's usually mental health comorbidities, and there's almost always some sort of family breakdown or struggle in there.
- [08:49]
B
Yeah, that's true. That's another one.
- [08:50]
A
And that's why, I mean, this is yet another case where this shooter killed his own family before doing this. And that it is so critical that we can recognize these patterns if we want to have any hope of trying to mitigate the future of these incidents. And when you have news outlets who will refuse to tell you the most basic facts about who the shooter is, it just feels futile. I want to point out that the world and everything in it did a story before this shooting in Canada. They did a story a couple days ago, earlier this week, that I cannot stop thinking about. And it was an interview with a man who had. He's grown now, but when he was a teenager, had planned a mass shooting, and he. He was estranged from his family. He was kind of couch surfing as a teenager. It sounds like he had just a really horrible childhood. And he tells this story of, you know, a young friend from school who really took him in and the friend's parents who let him sleep on their couch and let him come over when he was troubled. And he talked about, you know, his motivation was. Was that he. He hate, like you said, he hated himself, he said. And he wanted to make his. He felt ignored by his parents, and he wanted to make them reckon with the fact of him. That's what he said. This was such a helpful story because this is the kind of information you want to have afterwards. What drove somebody to this kind of thing. I highly recommend that story. But all that to say, this is why it's so dystopian that we would refuse to even communicate the most basic facts of These shooters, because we need to know what's causing this.
- [10:27]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And look, I don't want to be simplistic on it. There's certainly factors in each and every shooting that changes from point to point, but this idea of the way that God made us in his image relationally, and two of those relationships are our understanding and relationship with ourself, and then our relationship with others. And of course, understanding the image of God fully is that all of those relationships are first and foremost ordered in our relationship with God. But I remember I'm blanking on a name. There's a gentleman, his last name is Graham, I believe, who started a wonderful project in Austin, Texas, with tiny homes to deal with the homeless population. And it's been one of the most successful projects to deal with that problem that we've ever seen. And it's been really hard to mimic, too, which is interesting. But all that to say he summed up, what is homelessness? He was asked. And it's not, he said, a catastrophic loss of a home. It's a catastrophic loss of relationship. And if you kind of scratch behind the surface of so many different issues, including this one, and you understand the relational nature, because we're made in the image of the relational God, the God who is Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then a lot of things kind of come down to this is a set of broken relationships at the core of these issues. And then the solution is relationships. It's not more money. It's not more education. It's not less racism or discrimination. It's not kind of getting on the right side of history. Well, I mean, sometimes social services are needed to deliver those relationships, but the church is also the one that has relationship, should have relationships down. Right. So, you know, that's. That's the real opportunity for us.
- [12:20]
A
Yeah, I remember you teaching me that before. And that felt, you know, then once I heard that from you, I started seeing it everywhere.
- [12:26]
B
You see it everywhere? Yeah, absolutely.
- [12:28]
A
Working at the pregnancy center and everything. And we live in a neighborhood that has quite a bit of homelessness. And, you know, my daughters at various times have expressed fear about it. And, you know, I've heard also several times, like, you know, you shouldn't be judgmental of these people because you are only, you know, one or two bad decisions away from the same kind of catastrophe. And there's wisdom in that kind of humility. Like assuming it could never happen to you is probably not wise. But when my girls have brought up their fear to me, I've always said, do you know how many people stand in between you and that. And you know, I, I'm not going to sit here and tell you we will always have the money that we need or we'll always have the material things that we need. But I do know that there are at least 50 human people in this city and in this country that will, that are standing between you and that. And that is such an incredible gift. I think that's so right. John. Let's take a quick break. We're going to be right back with more breakpoint this week.
- [13:27]
C
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- [14:37]
A
We'Re back on Breakpoint this week. John, I want to talk now about a really ugly meme that President Trump shared on his truth social platform before then taking it down. This has caused a little bit of a political firestorm. I'm happy to report that I never saw it, but this was apparently something like a meme about election fraud and it included an animation of former President Barack Obama and his wife kind of in a very racist trope. And he since took it down and the president has said he hadn't seen it the whole way through. I'm not exactly sure what his rationale there is, but I've certainly seen a lot of reaction about it, including from Dr. Al Mohler, who kind of talked about just the loss of dignity in the position of president when you do Something like this. What was your reaction to this?
- [15:26]
B
Well, first of all, there was an awful lot of immediate reaction. And then as happens in almost all these stories, there's also an awful lot of context and backstory that at least bring a little bit more understanding to the fact of what probably happened. We don't know what happened. A whole bunch of people are pretty sure they know what happened, but they really don't. What we do know at the end of the day is that a clip from a video was added or was included in this post that the president put on his True Social account. And in that clip was a racist trope of picturing the Obamas as apes. And it's indefensible, it's unjustifiable, and it may very well be that he didn't know it was being posted. But you still have to take responsibility since it's your True Social account and that's what we have. You remember years ago when asked, what do you confess? You remember that there was an interview with President Trump and asked, what do you confess to God? And he said, nothing, I don't confess anything. And he didn't. He refused to. And I'm not saying we always do the wrong thing by intention, but oftentimes we do the wrong thing by accident. Sometimes it's not your fault, but you take responsibility because you're the leader of the free world. I remember years ago, one thing that struck with me, a lesson in leadership that I got from a mentor of mine, colleague at the Colson Center, Bill Brown, who was at the time president of the college that I had attended and worked at. He walked into his office one day and I just hadn't seen him in a couple weeks. And I said, hey, how's it going, Dr. Brown? And. And he said, well, you know, leadership oftentimes is apologizing for stuff you didn't do. And it just always stuck with me. And I've tried to kind of hold on to that because I think it asks for a level of humility that I'm always not willing to give. And we haven't seen in this president. The thing that bothers me more, though, this isn't so much about the president's guilt or non guilt, although I think we would be in a completely different place with him and his reception if he'd be willing to admit wrongdoing every now and again. The thing that I need to talk about is the number of people who didn't just defend the president and saying, well, he didn't know, he didn't know. This is what it was added on. It was an autoplay. There's a whole lot of explanations that have been brought up, and I think many of them are plausible explanations for how this thing eventually got posted. But the people who tried to defend the video and the defense of the video is that it's kind of a Lion King. You know, it portrays a whole lot of people as apes and, or monkeys and, you know, and it portrays everybody like animal. And Trump eventually is the king of the jungle. That, that, that doesn't matter. The portrayal of African Americans, the portrayal of black people as monkeys is part of the racist history of the United States. It's actually something that at one point took the expression of putting an African man in a zoo as an exhibit. This is a story that is part of American history. It was in the barrack zoo. And this is also something then that was used to talk about intelligence, that was used to talk about the sexual proclivities of African men. And of course, it has a very distinct intellectual history, which is straight out of Darwinism. And people forget that Darwinism was an explanation of the human condition and an explanation of where biological life emerged, especially human biological life, and saw it as a connection. What people missed at the time, but we quickly realized in the 20th century, were how many social implications were going to emerge if we embrace that idea. This is what we mean when we say ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. Jonah Goldberg wrote a book years ago called Liberal Fascism in which he traced this particularly. I remember chapter six. It's a must read chapter in which he traced the racial history of liberal thought. And it's completely connected to Darwinism. And we don't want to explain that away because it's a horrific idea. It's a horrific idea that will grow feet, walk into our world and create a whole lot more dehumanization than we can ever imagine. We don't have to actually imagine it because we just have to look at the history of the 20th century. Nazism was applied Darwinism and the way that it understood the eugenics project. Right. The connection of humans to animals, which by the way, I mean, we have to at least acknowledge is the dominant way that science and biology are taught to public schoolers and has been for decades now. So if this is all people learn about what it means to be human is that we are descended from, you know, animals and apes and that somehow we're just the same, except with a conscience. One wonders why we shouldn't do this. But we all know we shouldn't do this, and we shouldn't do this. And Christians, of all people should not explain away. We should not try to justify that this is somehow not racist, that somehow the context of the video makes this okay. It does not. There's that it was clearly a choice made of which animals, which politicians were which animals. And in all ways, it's dehumanizing. And that's the thing that we should not explain away. I don't think we should explain away the responsibility. People should be responsible enough if they have the nuclear codes. They should be responsible enough for their own social media accounts. But beyond that, I'm just talking about do not explain away the video. The video was racist. It was terrible. And it's not something that we should accept the history of this idea. And it's not like people shouldn't know the history of this idea. We may not know the details that there was once a African man put into a zoo as an exhibit. You may not know that. But, you know, by the way, just Google is as bad as I'm describing it to be. But when you start talking about the eugenics policies that were first embraced across the United States, Fit family contest at county fairs, forced sterilizations that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes justifying the sterilization of a black woman in Virginia saying three generations of imbeciles is enough. We don't need any more. Listen, this is the history. You can deny it, you could say, well, I didn't mean that. But that is the history of this. And it has unleashed a havoc on the world in the 20th century that we do not want to repeat.
- [22:40]
A
I just feel embarrassed the president of my country did that. You know, whether knowingly or not, it's just. It's a blight. And. Yeah, I appreciate that teaching. Dawn, let's talk quickly about the super bowl halftime show. Cause we talked about it last week leading up to it, and of course, the TP USA alternative with Kid Rock that they'd put on. I caught the halftime show. I thought it was strange for a few reasons. I mean, I.
- [23:07]
B
Which halftime show? That's the question. And you will be judged by how you answer this question.
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A
Oh, dear. I'm not gonna tell you. No, I'm just kidding. I just watched the normal one, the actual one at the game. I was at my neighbor's house. And the main thing I thought was strange about it was I thought it was kind of a cool set design. But being in the stadium, there's no way anybody could see what was happening. They basically Set up a jungle, and I don't think they could even watch it. That, to me, was the weirdest part, was that they built a halftime show made for camera, not for the actual experience of being there, which seems strange given how much a Super bowl ticket costs.
- [23:43]
B
If you're paying that much for a Super bowl ticket, I. I'm pretty sure you're going for the football more than the halftime show. That's just my save.
- [23:49]
A
No, you're going there to be seen. It's like going to an NBA game and everybody's wearing six inch heels. You're going there to be seen.
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B
That only happens in la, and that's Jerry Buss. That's a whole. There's a whole history to that set of ideas, too.
- [24:00]
A
Fair enough. This is why I loved soccer in.
- [24:03]
B
The uk Anyway, everyone sits nicely and claps politely until there's a riot.
- [24:08]
A
Very civil. Is very civil. There's a part of the stands that are set aside for opponents, fans, until there's a riot. There's no scuffles. Well, there's no.
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B
And as you're walking out to the.
- [24:17]
A
Parking lot, your team's lost your knife.
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B
You're just telling half the story. I've seen videos.
- [24:22]
A
Well, my team won, so. Okay. But getting. So last week when we were talking about these halftime shows, I mean, we were braced for the worst, which understandably so. And I, you know, there. There had been rumblings that Bad Bunny, the performer at the football game, said something about, like, this was going to be an homage to LGBTQ icons or whatever. I didn't see any of that. It was certainly grotesquely sexual, and the lyrics, which were all in Spanish, were grotesquely sexual. But it didn't seem to be. I. I guess as maybe my standards are too low. It didn't seem to be as crazy as maybe I was anticipating. Did you happen to catch that one and.
- [25:00]
B
No, I didn't. I turned over to the other one. We had a group of people, including kids, and I. I haven't allowed the. The regular super bowl halftime show. I mean, I. I get. I. There. There have been moments where I've checked in on it because you kind of realize. You kind of think, well, this probably isn't going to be a sexual. If you're talking about a, you know, super old white dude from the 80s, you know, rocking away, that's a different sort of thing. But there was no question this was going to be sexual. And it was. I don't speak Spanish. The. The point, according to Roger Goodell, the. The commissioner of the NFL was to reach other audiences. And I think there's probably a huge market in Spanish speaking audiences for the NFL. And so in what was proclaimed a family friendly show, Bad Bunny saying really grotesque sexual lyrics to people who could actually understand them. I couldn't.
- [25:47]
A
Most of America, they're not poetic, John. Like, it's.
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B
Oh, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know enough about Spanish rap to know how that comes from the 80s.
- [25:55]
A
Rap was very sexual, but it was a lot of innuendo, which is still gross and bad. This is. They've just like given up on a new end.
- [26:02]
B
Well, we're down. We're downstream from an awful lot. Right? I mean, to call this family friendly is just. And I think people actually believe it when they say it's family friendly. Like, this is normal. Does that even mean stuff? It is. It is a bizarre thing. You know, we got an awful lot of comments about our. Our commentary on the fact that there were two shows and our hesitation. And it was interesting. We were told that we should walk back. Our comments criticizing Kid Rock. I don't remember criticizing Kid Rock. I do remember saying, look, it's a little bit ironic that Kid Rock is the family friendly alternative. You know, he has turned towards Christianity. And I did know that he has turned towards actually being vocal about God and faith and that sort of stuff. The lyrics that he sang in his song, which you also couldn't understand at. In the halftime show of TP usa, which I thought overall was actually pretty good. The production value was pretty good. I, you know, good country songs. There was a little bit maybe too much drinking. I was. It was again, tbn. Talking about drinking. There's just, look, you have to acknowledge that this is a little bit ironic. And then, you know, the lyrics of the song that Kid Rock sang also has some sexuality in it and so on. So. But there was a moment at the end of the show where he took a song that is very appropriate for the year that Turning Point has had for the assassination of Charlie Kirk of, you know, you don't know when your time is. It's a very Christian idea that your life now has meaning. And so don't put things off because one day you're not going to have the chance. And that he took it and, you know, turned it into a gospel presentation. And look, a couple weeks ago at the Grammys, Jelly Roll, who is a redeemed life, gave a gospel presentation. Kid Rock gave a gospel presentation. I wish he'd have chosen a different song for the first one, but the second one was pretty great. We also were told we had completely lost a person's respect, trust and loyalty because we had anything to do with showcasing the foul mouth Kid Rock. So I'm not sure if we supported the halftime show or didn't support the halftime show. Here's what I want to say, though. What we did talk about, and I think it is an important piece of cultural analysis, is that this was the first time going into the super bowl that the topic of choice was not the teams that were playing and who was going to win, it was the halftime shows that completely drowned out the talk on who was playing and who was favored and so on. And it also became the topic coming out of the half of the Super Bowl. Now, part of that had to do with most of the game was it was a defensive struggle, let's put it that way. And the Seahawks were dominant and so on. But when everything becomes political, when everything becomes political, this is the violation of sphere sovereignty that Abraham Kuyper talked about. I know it's weird to apply this to Abraham Kuyper and sphere sovereignty, the halftime shows of the super bowl, but this is what we're talking about. The whole thing was politically determined. And when politics takes all the air out of the room, which it has, it's a moment Chuck Colson used to talk about all the time, that politics is downstream from culture, and it usually is. Politics is culture. Right now. Our political loyalties are actually what's being tested above any and every other loyalties. I don't have loyalty to any super bowl halftime show. Like, you know, why? Why? I don't care that much. Appreciate the effort. It was long overdue. As I said on the world and everything in it like that sexualization of the halftime show and being called family friendly goes back a decade now and it's awful and it should stop. And God bless people that are trying to provide creative alternatives. Absolutely. And yeah, there was redeemable things there. Absolutely. But good heavens, to put all this weight on the political interpretation of a halftime show, that's something that we need to look at and go, we're not okay. If that's kind of where we're landing on this.
- [30:26]
A
Yeah, that's like a level of decadence that we probably need to self check. The more I see things like this happen in pop culture, the more convinced I am that whenever there's a big, you know, skirmish online or in culture about something like this, the bigger things are happening somewhere else. It's like a distraction. Right. And the Actual cultural movement stuff. You know, when I think of the super bowl, what I want to think about is, are things like, you know, the really, really young quarterback from the patriots, Drake May, 23, he's the youngest. Him and I think Dan Marino are now the youngest quarterbacks ever to play in the Super Bowl. And he, you know, gave an interview with ESPN a couple weeks prior and basically just said in his interview, I hope all my teammates get married. He's 23. He got married last summer to who had been his girlfriend from middle school. And you know, that obviously it made me think, when I'm reading that, it made me think of Charlie Kirk and the message that he was sending, you know, shortly before his death where he was saying, get married, have babies, get married, do the things that bring meaning to your life. And I'm like, I guess halftime shows come and go. This stuff is much more enduring. And then, of course, there was a story this week. I saw that the offensive coordinator from the Seahawks gave an interview and said that for Christmas this year, he gave a bible to every single member of his team. Like, culture change is happening. It just, you know, and very positive things. It just might not be in the direction that you're looking. And thank God for that because, yeah, I feel like this halftime show thing, I'm with you. Like, great. Do an alternative. I hate the sexualization too. I hate that it's not, we're not really showcasing talent anymore. It feels much more showy and fake than it used to. But there is culture change happening. It just might not be where we're looking.
- [32:18]
B
Yeah, well, Drake may also showed his character, by the way, and how he responded to what was a brutal loss and really not a great performance.
- [32:28]
A
Him a horrible game.
- [32:30]
B
Well, he got, it wasn't all his fault. He was getting pummeled by a four man rush, but I don't get too much into that. But I did respect kind of how he responded to that and it was really difficult for me to do so because he's a North Carolina Tar Heel in the same week as when the Tar Heels beat Duke and the classic sports rivalry, the greatest sports rivalry in all the sports, the Duke, Carolina game. And, and Duke gave up three threes at the end and lost after leading by double digits in the first half and the second half, which is super painful. So I, I, I cheer for him grudgingly.
- [33:07]
A
Okay, fair enough, John. Let's take another break. We'll be right back with more break point this week.
- [33:15]
B
Hi, John Stonestreet here from the Colson Center. If you've ever taken a close look at a really old church building, most of the time you can find a cornerstone. A lot of times the cornerstone will bear the names of the founders who built the church, not just to last during their time, but for generations to come. If the ministry of the Colson center is making a lasting impact in your life, and if it's going to continue to make a lasting impact for the Kingdom of God, we have to have that same kind of strong foundation. That's why I want to invite you to become a Cornerstone Monthly partner with us at the Colson Center. Your monthly support provides a steady foundation so that we can do the work that God has called us to do. It's a way to ensure that resources like breakpoint, the Strong Women podcast, the what would you say? Video series, and the Identity Project can remain free so that believers, families, individuals, pastors, teachers can continue to use them and benefit from them. Your monthly support also helps to fund Colson Fellows scholarships for those who have financial need. More than anything else, that sort of financial stability allows us to seize the strategic opportunities as God brings them to us. So please join us laying a strong foundation for the future by becoming a Cornerstone monthly part partner of the Colson Center. Visit us at colsoncenter.org monthly that's colsoncenter.org monthly.
- [34:42]
A
We'Re back on Breakpoint this week. John, I want to talk now about an article that's making a lot of waves. It was published on Fortune and it was essentially somebody who is has been working and coding within AI for the past several years, basically saying that in a few months he's predicting a huge cliff is coming, that most of the intelligence based like cognitive jobs that people hold right now, things like, you know, from lawyer on down to coder are going to be obsolete and it's going to happen really quickly because of AI. It was, you know, there's very hyperbolic language, but he didn't seem to think that it was hyperbolic and a lot of people don't seem to think so. And it's caused understandably a lot of consternation. Did you read the piece? What do you think? Are we going to be out of a job?
- [35:33]
B
Well, man, it has created a storm of reactions and now even a couple parody reactions. There was a piece on X this morning, something the title of the article was something big is happening in AI and most people will be blindsided. And the response was Something small is happening. And apparently it was pretty funny. There's also been some questions about kind of his legitimacy. I don't know that, and I don't know anything about kind of his background. He works in there. But I think what kind of made everyone, you know, wake up was how he described Monday. And he said, this is my Monday. I went and I told AI that I wanted an app, what I wanted it to do. And I left for four hours, came back four hours later, and the app was fully coded, fully written, with all the functionality better than I could have done it with no flaws and had been fully tested. And so everyone's like, that's different than 2025, that's different than 2024, that's different than 2023. And he kind of goes back and traces the major innovations in AI week by week. There's also some other articles that came out this week on AI, and not just in response to this, but just kind of talking about what the promise is and what the perils are. On Ross Douthat's podcast, he had a prominent thinker, a very. He called him a utopianist at one point, who has very high hopes for AI and the possibilities that it will bring. Schumer's was much more of a big warning like, this is going to. The capabilities are growing exponentially and really beyond our imagination. So which one of those two things is true? And I think the answer is, is all of them. And that might be the issue and the question at hand. So it created a big stir and underscored the fact that there's a whole lot more thinking that needs to be done on artificial intelligence. But we're already too late. In other words, things are already moving forward. I don't mean too late for the future of the world or anything like that, but I mean too late because we're building the plane in the air, ethically speaking. I've been remembering a lot a line from a book by Peter Kraft, who wrote a book on ethics years ago. And he said, just at the time when our weapons went from being bows and arrows to thermonuclear bombs, we became moral infants. In other words, our capacities got a lot bigger. Our moral framework and our moral reasoning became much less, I don't know, pervasive, simplistic, whatever in the world. And so we're just not the kind of people that are able to handle these tools that are now in our hands. We've talked about that with artificial reproductive technologies, right? The technology gets beyond our ethical consideration. And at the heart of it all is hubris that we think we. We will do it Right. This time. And we. That we're somehow not fallen in the same way that our people that have gone before us are. And so anyway, it was just a conversation that was launched culturally this week, and it's a big one. And he's right that we need to have this conversation, but it's hard to put brakes on something when it's moving so fast.
- [39:01]
A
All I have in response to this is philosophy at this point, mostly because of my dearth of knowledge of how all of this works and my inability to predict where it's going, practically speaking. But all I can say is that it is really critical that we choose, and Christians have every leg to stand on logically and spiritually to say this. We need to choose to believe and commit to believing always, that being human is worthwhile and that we be by the mere fact that here's my, like, logical proof, God is good and God made us and put us here. By those three facts alone, we know that we have purpose and there's a reason for us to be here. So whatever little whispers this thing starts to put in your ear that our work isn't worthwhile, our time isn't worthwhile, or we are not serving a purpose anymore, we have to choose, like today, right now, to believe that that's not true, regardless of how we can describe our purpose and how that changes and how we see ourselves making an impact on the world or not being as efficient or effective as an AI. What, we just have to keep fidelity to that truth that we're supposed to be here. And there's something unique ethically and morally and spiritually and physically about being human that will never not be, regardless of how the practical things we can do are replicable.
- [40:29]
B
Yeah, I don't disagree with that at all. I would just add we need to know what being human actually is. In other words, not just know that humans are exceptional.
- [40:37]
A
I think that's part of the definition.
- [40:39]
B
Well, of course it is what being human is. To get to the heart of what, you know, AI threatens, the threats of AI versus the promises of AI, you have to know what it means to be human. Like, what are the uniquenesses and the exceptions. Here's an example. One of the crises of the information age in general, which, you know, dates back particularly to the last several decades. But the birth of the Internet, but then, you know, was accelerated in an incredible pace in the year 2007, when we had smartphones and then social media and access to information in our hands and Internet con. Not. Not just, you know, we had to go to the cafe and get on those big clunky computers, but everybody had Internet all the time. Is that the. There was this proximity to information that the world had never seen. So the danger is thinking, and I think that has been a very real problem, is thinking that the proximity to information or the access to information is the same thing as wisdom. Wisdom is a uniquely human thing because it is something given to us by God, who created us in his image. Elephants don't get wisdom. Animals don't have wisdom. You know, you might look at a cool dog that has a cool, you know, old kind of gray beard, you know, kind of around his mouth, and think, that dog looks wise, or an owl looks wise, but they're not wise.
- [42:13]
A
My dog is the dumbest animal that has ever lived. So we don't run that risk in my house. But go on.
- [42:18]
B
You just gave me a childhood memory. I won a pig at the pig scramble at the county fair. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I was good. I won it twice, actually. And the first time brought it home and we made a pin for it and hung up a tire because he liked to hang in the tire swing. And I cannot picture this. And my dad was like, you watch these pigs are. Are smart animals. And then the very next thing, he did something and he goes, that's stupid pig. It was just funny, like. But look, even if a pig or an animal figures something out, it's. It's instinct. It's not. It's. It's maybe knowledge, but it's not wisdom. And T.S. elliott said this years ago, where is the wisdom we've lost in knowledge? Where's the knowledge we've lost in learning to equate those things? And of course, that's the feature of AI is that it can learn. That doesn't mean it can acquire wisdom. But we're only going to be exceptional if we do what the Psalmist says, which is pursue wisdom. Right? What Solomon said in Proverbs, pursue wisdom. If it cost everything you have, go get that. And to confuse that with a proximity to knowledge, we need to be really clear about that, because that's going to inform then how we understand education, how we teach our own kids, how we structure our universities.
- [43:39]
A
But, John, I would say the bigger risk is that people. It's not that people conflate wisdom with knowledge. It's that even if they accepted that premise, they can't see a utility for wisdom. And we're so obsessed with utility that they're like, why should I care?
- [43:54]
B
Well, maybe I don't Know that we use the vocabulary of wisdom. It's become a part of. I think it needs to become a growing part. And I owe this thought to Jennifer Patterson, who actually wrote on this and is now on her team at the Colson center and working on the question of image of God and identity and talking about wisdom and how that kind of plays. Because listen, that is the emphasis of Proverbs. It was the knowledge of good and evil that led to the fall of all things. In other words, knowledge itself is not the same thing as wisdom. So my point is, is that the catechism, the catechizing of the church and Christian worldview formation needs to get really serious about wisdom and why it's not the same thing as knowledge. I agree. People can't tell the difference. And probably, yes, people don't care. What we're entering in with artificial intelligence is that people won't even care about knowledge because somebody else can do all the thinking for them. Right. But what I'm saying is this taking us further and further away from being human. And we need to know that we need to actually think those thoughts. We need to encourage other people to think those thoughts. That it's not just, oh, humans are special, but humans are special in this way. Humans are exceptional in this way. Humans are unique in this way. By the way, I was going to give this example. There was a. One of my daughter's friends goes to a Christian college. The Bible teacher at this college actually said, no, I want you to use AI to first year students studying the Bible. Go use AI. To me it sounds insane. It's as insane as not taking kids smartphones away in school. Like, we know, we know what this does. Like, it's, it's clear what this does. Like we know students are biblically illiterate. They need to get into the Bible themselves. Which brings up, I think the second thing about what it means to be human. If I can get specific on this, which is the Bible is a means, a primary means by which God relates with us. Right. The premise of Christianity is that we're made in his image and that God has wanted to be known, so he has made himself and his will known in Scripture. So you don't want a mediator between yourself and scripture. You want to be in it yourself with others. AI isolates you like all computer technology does. And it actually is asking, you know, the Scriptures to be mediated to you with somebody else's or, you know, basically the ability to curate a bunch of knowledge.
- [46:31]
A
Yeah, I think it's, it's bigger than this. I spoke with a.
- [46:34]
B
Well, it is. Hold on, let me. Can I finish this one thing? Because what I'm talking about is what we were talking about earlier, the relational nature of what it means to be made in the image of God. So this article predicted that it was going to replace work, including lawyers. That's a relation. That's an outward relationship that you need when something's gone wrong. No, we shouldn't replace that. We are relational and we're primarily made, ordered in our relationship with God. Don't let AI interfere with that. And sermon. I mean, this. This has implications for sermon prep, for Bible study, for everything else. And then also don't let AI interfere with the relationships we need with other image bearers. So we're talking about the upward, inward, outward relationship, which have a hierarchical value over the downward relationship. This sounds like an awful lot that people aren't going to think about or know about, but they need to. We need to be specific on what it means to be human and how it applies.
- [47:32]
A
I can imagine ways when it could be you. It could be used in service to some of these things. So I'll just say I spoke to a commissioned Colson fellow this week who is a maternal fetal medicine doctor who said that ambient listening AI has been an incredible help to him because now instead of sitting in front of a patient and having to take notes on a computer or try to write down what they're saying, the AI is listening to their conversation and he can format it in a certain way. So that's just listening at a certain time, and then it makes the notes for him. So this has empowered him to be actually present in this conversation in a way that he couldn't before it happened. That, I think, is a distinction, too. Like if you.
- [48:13]
B
That's a great distinction.
- [48:14]
A
Remember what it means to be human before you use it and then use it in a way that serves that vision as opposed to tries to mediate it or replicate it.
- [48:23]
B
So where would that go wrong? Where would that go wrong?
- [48:26]
A
Oh, I mean, in a million directions. But if you've thought about, I think.
- [48:29]
B
Just one, and this is what I'm trying to say, I think it goes wrong when the doctor, and hopefully as a Colson fellow, he'll never do this when the doctor lets the AI listen. For him to have a second listener and someone who can process kind of the details of the information and do the note take. I mean, to be pre. You said it. To be present in that conversation. That's the relational aspect. And you don't want your doctor to be AI. You want your doctor to be human. But can AI serve that relationship? Yes. Can it replace that relationship? No. And so I go back to we don't have enough substance on the image of God and what it means to be made in the image of God. And I agree. That's a wonderful example. And we're going to have to listen, I'm not saying we're going to unseat AI, we're going to have to live with AI. But if we're not clear about who we are and what it means to be human in specific ways, then we're just going to allow this replacement. Just like we have in so many other ways. Just with social media replacing friendships and screens replacing our actual learning and knowledge and a million other ways.
- [49:37]
A
Yeah, agreed. Okay. Well, John, let's tackle some of the questions you mentioned. We've got several questions and comments over the last couple of weeks and I want to get to some of those Now. The first one is regarding the Epstein files. This is someone challenging us. You know, that we talk about sexual sin and sexual content and they hear a deafening silence that we have not brought up the Jeffrey Epstein files.
- [50:01]
B
Well, yeah, it's actually a question that comes from somebody that I know, haven't talked to her in a really long time, a former student and someone that just a smart, just a wonderful person has had critiques, I think, over the years for us about these kind of inconsistencies. This isn't an inconsistency of being unwilling to talk about it. No one knew what it was. There was a bunch of rumors about what it was and then it was released and then it wasn't released and that sort of stuff. There was a whole lot of thought about how bad it was. There was a whole lot of accusations about who was in and who wasn't in. And even that's not super clear other than it is as bad right now from what has been revealed as you can imagine. And my thought on it is two things. Number one, it is amazing that this went on for so long, involves so many people and remain hidden. And I usually chalk up conspiracy theories to incompetence, and this one is chalked up to a group of people holding guilt over each other's heads for silence. And you think about kind of how creative evil can be on one side holding guilt over each other's heads, and then also how stupid evil makes you. I've said this a long time. You can see it in First Kings, chapter 11, talking about Solomon as sin makes you dumb, sin makes you foolish. The other thing that I think some people have brought out, and there was a couple people that wrote about this this week, and it's a very, very important point, including Rod Dreher, is that this kind of exploitation of children, young women in particular, was normal throughout the course of human history until Christianity. And the fact that this appalls everyone, including a whole bunch of people that just a decade ago were really pushing in various ways for the sexual freedoms of young people, lowering the age of content, not guilting people, you know, not teaching abstinence because, you know, young people are sexual anyway, and making consent, what it's all about, even for young people and even to the point that kids should sexually self determine in every way, including in, you know, self diagnosing their own gender dysphoria. I mean, the inconsistency here between the ideology that was taught and the outrage for those that are involved is pretty dramatic. And the moral compass that comes from sexual exploitation of children comes from Christianity in human history. Tom Holland writes about it and others have written about it and thank God that it did. Every person that is in this and revealed should be in jail, should be punished. And as this becomes more and more to light, it's going to implicate people. That is going to surprise, I think people that are on kind of one side or the other thinking that, you know, my side is the good side and that side is the bad side. And this is a story that's showing that the problem with the human heart runs right down the middle of the human heart. Not between groups of people and certainly not between political parties. It's awful. It needs to be reckoned with. And we try at the Colson center not to speak about things we don't know about. And this was a thing that honestly a whole lot of people were talking about but very few people knew about.
- [53:35]
A
I don't want to be too cynical, but I don't, I don't think this was. I don't think this remained hidden. I think it was an open secret. And I think that any the people who are like all the major news media and the politicians calling for more transparent whatever they're. I again, I don't want to be too cynical, but I don't think they're as appalled. I think they are performatively appalled. I think they're performatively outraged because that's the moment that we're in. This is when we're supposed to be outraged by this and we're Supposed to wonder who did this and who did that. And we're going to defend the people that we view as being on our sides who were on the list. And I just, I think that the burden remains on people outside of a Christian worldview to tell me why this was wrong. And there they will always fall back on consent. But that is a very flimsy moral leg to stand on. And you know, the more I read about it, the more I'm just like, this is our modern day Marquis de Sade. Like Jeffrey Epstein just went for it. He took the cultural ethos of what sexuality is and what it's supposed to be, which is in, in that world, outside of a Christian framework. It is the powerful exerting power over the weak to their own, you know, for their own pleasure. And he ran with it that this is what you do when you don't have a reason not to do it. And all of the people, I mean, and I, I, I'm, I'm saying there that people are performatively outraged because people who are performing outrage are like, then two weeks later discovered to have been part of it. Right. So it's, it's, it's a huge, I think it was a huge open secret, but it is also a reflection of the culture. It's, it's not like there was this seedy den over here where these things were happening and these people were ashamed of it at the time. This is just a reflection of where, of the depravity and like the, the poverty of our moral imagination about sexuality.
- [55:31]
B
It's kind of like the Kermit Gosnell story where how was this evil hidden for so long? I think it was an open secret and it was performative. I agree with all that. I think everything needs to come out and when it comes out, there needs to be appropriate punishment and you, no one should be protected from that. And I think that it does. It should make us question to every degree the ideas of the sexual revolution, because ideas about sexual freedom and sexual expression are all at the heart of this. And thank God that Christianity brought the, you know, a moral outrage to the exploitation of young people and minors and children. So let the chips fall where they may. That's my take. And there's more that needs to come out.
- [56:27]
A
Well, you know what's fascinating, so we're coming up on a 35 year anniversary of the Mapplethorpe case. I don't know if you remember this, but this was in Cincinnati in the 90s and this was a contemporary art museum that wanted to exhibit a collection of photographs from a late but up and coming in the art world. Photographer named Mapplethorpe. And the photographs were child pornography. And at the time, you know, a group of local Christians came out against it, you know, lobbied local politicians and the museum to take these down and whatever. And it ended up being a lawsuit. The museum was indicted by a grand jury for obscenity and then was later acquitted. And the. The exhibit went on. And at the time, it was framed as like, this is the censorship issue. This is a bunch of, like, religious fuddy duddies who are suing for the right to not be shocked versus, like, those of us who are on the cutting edge of free expression. And even today, like it. It's still a case study in legal textbooks. And like, the Smithsonian magazine has a big retrospective about it. And it's, you know, this is art versus, you know, would be censors and all this kind of stuff. But it is really difficult to imagine a museum today or major media saying, yes, we should allow child porn because of free expression. The cultural winds have just changed. And in this one very narrow case, it seems like they've changed for the better. But this is why it's a really bad idea to take cultural wins as your moral compass, because everybody's outraged right now about the Epstein list and what Epstein was doing. But when it was happening, the most powerful and influential people in the world were a part of it and were not scared enough to not be a part of it, if that makes sense. And that should tell us something. But it once again involves the exploitation of children. Dawn, let's get to another question quickly. You mentioned again earlier the case of Fox Varian in New York. This was the young person who just won $2 million in damages because she was rushed through, you know, this gender mutilating surgery at the. At the hands of a few doctors who told her she had to do it, essentially. And this person says, I heard your recent commentary about Fox Varian's lawsuit. I agree with your position regarding the immorality of the surgery performed and the advice she received. But I'm concerned that you're calling for these people to be charged, convicted, and jailed. My question is for violating what law, Though it can be inconvenient, we should adhere to the laws on the books. And medical malpractice can only result in imprisonment in very rare cases in which there's gross negligence or an intent to do harm.
- [59:18]
B
I mean, the malpractice laws are the laws that I'm talking about, and they are on the books. The malpractice, which basically says that you act too hastily. There should at least be in those cases a charge and a conviction. My wife actually sat on the jury of a malpractice case when it was clear it was just a mistake, it was just an accident. And it didn't result in jail time, it just resulted in a fine. But this is what we know now from the WPATH emails and other things that these people knew that they were experimenting and social. Experimenting on patients, medically experimenting on patients, especially minors. Listen, there is enough precedent for that to be. And especially to do it intentionally, not knowing the outcome, basically pretending to drive forward a theory. Well, listen, we've got enough history of medical law that that actually becomes something that a doctor is liable for and should be held accountable for. And I do think it breaches that category, mainly because it was sexual exploitation and sexual abuse and the sexual abuse in children. You don't get a free pass because you're a doctor and you're doing it in the name of medicine. Now, do I think that the jail time is going to happen? No, I don't think it's going to happen. But to me, it falls into the Gosnell category. Here you have someone that was, you know, doing these terrible things in the name of medicine. He was kind of proceeding without regulation and oversight, pushing the line, and he knew he was pushing the line, and he did go to jail. And I think that there's enough. And it started in a kind of a medical malpractice way, but then it proceeded on to actually violating the law in ways of both not caring for patients and then also what would be considered murder. And because of the quote, unquote snipping, which is still the word that gives me chills. This falls into the same category. In my mind, you might not agree that it falls into the same category. And I get it. And I don't want to be Willy Nill just by throwing people in jail that I disagree with. I do think this violates laws that go beyond any sort of protections that doctors have. Understand the WPATH emails have shown us that there was a group of quote unquote, professionals who knew they were making stuff up, who knew they were driving forward a social experiment, who knew that the complications, quote unquote, or the resistance and the ongoing problems, even quote unquote, after surgery, were to a degree that it cast doubt and aspersion on everything that they were doing, and yet they did it anyway. And they were not alone in their desire to drive forward these things. And the fact that it was on children puts it in a different category as well. You add it all up together, I think there's justification for jail time.
- [62:16]
A
Yeah, completely agree. Okay, John, I've got one more. This is from a listener who says, I just finished listening to Breakpoint this week. I wanted to hear your thoughts on something I've been wrestling with, with when it comes to gay marriage and adopting children. I've heard some say it may not be ideal, but there's always worse. For instance, two gay dads might be better than a heterosexual pair of parents who are addicted to drugs or alcohol. What are your thoughts?
- [62:41]
B
Well, of course, you shouldn't put a kid in a home with heterosexual parents who are addicted to drugs and alcohol or who are known abusers or anything like that. Of course not. There's two things to keep in mind when it comes to the question of gay adoption. Number one is in reality, since it's been around for quite some time, especially after gay marriage, gays are not lining up to adopt needy kids. That's not what's happening. It is a red herring to what's actually happening. What's happening is through surrogacy and ivf, it has driven that industry forward and to the point that some estimates are that much percentage wise. That's. That's what gay couples are choosing. They're not lining up to help needy kids. Secondly, remember that the difference between adoption and surrogacy and IVF is that surrogacy and ivf, when you kind of custom order a baby, that creates the brokenness, that creates the broken family, that creates the separation with mom and maybe dad. And adoption is, that is the option to heal brokenness that's already taken place because of the death of a, of a parent, because of a brokenness, because of abuse. You don't want to create brokenness by robbing a child of either a mom or a dad. Gay parenting also creates additional brokenness. So I just don't think we're in the situation where the only option we possibly have is to, you know, is to accommodate the wishes of gay adoptive couples as if they're lining up to take care of the needy. That is just not what's happening. And by the way, I had one third thing, and I know we need to wrap this up, but the third thing is simply this one bad case of homeschooling makes the entire state of Colorado want to regulate and bring that into some sort of reckoning. And here we have a number of cases of gay adoptions that have ended in abuse and sexual abuse, including, by the way, IVF and surrogacy as well. And there's still no regulation. It's just not there. And I think it needs to be questioned at the bottom line. If you think it's, you know, that gay couples are in a sinful, sexually broken lifestyle, which I do, you don't want to put a kid into that situation, especially doesn't have a mom or a dad, one of the others. And you're creating the additional brokenness. So it's a hypothetical and you can't make laws like that on hypotheticals.
- [65:20]
A
Right, Right. Okay. Well, thanks, John. Let's do some quick recommendations here before we close out the show. I'm just going to recommend a new piece in the Institute for Family Studies. They just did a study with the Wheatley Institute about dating behavior and found rather bleakly that only 1 in 320 to 35 year old single people have gone on a date in the last year. They're calling it a dating recession. So this seems relevant coming Valentine's Day. Maybe it'll be a little bit easier this weekend to get a reservation for dinner. But we somehow, we've talked about this on the show a whole bunch. This is an opportunity for the church and for all of those of us with matchmaking dreams get into it. We need to get these young people socializing and dating and off the screens. I think the most important data point in this study was that one of the biggest barriers between these kids and dating is that they said they don't have any confidence in their own ability to read social cues on a date. And I find that very believable because they are not actively trying to read social cues because they're not being social. So that seems like a big part of this. Get your kids to be social and to be with each other. And if you are a young person listening to this and you don't feel confident enough to ask somebody out, just know that nobody feels confident enough. And so you might as well just go for it. Happy Valentine's Day.
- [66:46]
B
Well, and part of that too is get rid of the smart the smartphones. I wrote about this 10 years ago in A Practical Guide to Culture is that eye contact is so rare. There's just so much you get from eye contact and how much eye contact has been it disrupted. This is a theology of the body in a sense or embodiment that and of course Proverbs talks about that. So I think that's absolutely right. And if I were going to recommend, I do think 2012. I thought about this this week, 2012, the last Wilberforce weekend conference that Chuck Colson spoke at. It's the one in which he was giving his last talk and collapsed and went to the hospital. And we kind of muddled through that weekend continuing on the conference, not knowing exactly what Chuck's situation was, but a breakout session with none other than Maggie Gallagher, the founder of the national organization for marriage and just one of the early champions of marriage against same sex marriage. She said this in 2012. Right. So our burger fell was what, 2015. She said the church needs to become a place where matchmaking happens. If you are a married couple in a church, have singles over, put them together. Now look, we've had enough feedback from the singles in our churches to know that we shouldn't be creepy about it. Maybe not too aggressive. So maybe, maybe be a little cooler than you want to be. You know, just because you're ambitious about it doesn't mean that gives you a justification to be annoying or to be, you know, anything like that. But I do think that this is a remarkable thing. I was at a Christian school this week. We were talking about this 20 years ago. We were kissing dating goodbye. Now, now, now all these, you know, teachers and, and, and, and college professors and, and, and people who are interacting with young men's like kiss, go talk to her, please go ask her out. Like kiss dating hello again. So, or, or courting, whatever you want to call it, but it's a, it's an important thing. So good, good, good piece, good research and I think it's a wonderful opportunity actually for the church.
- [68:44]
A
Don't call it courting. That's my advice.
- [68:46]
B
Oh, you're going to get emails.
- [68:48]
A
Good. Well, John, thank you. That is all the time we have for our program this week. From the Colson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet. Wishing you all a great week. We'll see you all back here next time.