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Breakpoint
Os Guinness on What Made America Great and Chloe Cole on Courage, Reality and Truth
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- [00:02]
Maria Baer
You're listening to breakpoint this Week where we talk about the top stories of the week from a Christian Worldview. This week we're going to do something a little different. We are going to offer you a peek behind the curtains at the Coulson Center National Conference held this past May. You are about to hear from the inimitable OS Guinness. So stick around. You do not want to miss this episode. Welcome to breakpoint this Week. I'm Maria Baer with the Colson center for Christian Worldview, normally alongside my co host John Stonestreet, President of the Colson Center. John and I are both traveling this week, so we thought we would share something special with you. We want to give you a little preview of the content that the more than 2,500 attendees were privileged to hear at this year's Colson Center National Conference. We met in May in Tennessee and it was an incredible experience. The conference theme was you are here. We talked about what it means to be a Christian called to this particular time and place and we heard from some incredible speakers including Dr. Carl Trueman, Oz Guinness, Chloe Cole, Frank Turek, Jean Twenge, and so many more about the cultural moment that we're in and how Christians can respond. And before we get to OS Guinness, I do want to let you know that if you'd like to hear the rest of the content from this year's Coulson Center National Conference, you can. If you go to colsoncenter.org july for a gift of any amount to the Colson center right now through August 8th, you will be granted access to all of the professionally captured and mastered video footage from the event. I highly recommend this, especially if you didn't have a chance to attend the conference. But even if you did, and you want to refresh your memory, please join us again by going to colsoncenter.org July okay, now you are going to hear from Os Guinness. He was our Wilberforce Award winner this year and deservedly so. He spoke to us at the conference about what made America great as a nation and as an idea. And then he shared his perspective about whether America is in decline or whether we're on the cusp of renewal. So please enjoy OS Guinness.
- [02:19]
Os Guinness
As many of you know, I was born in China and as a 7 year old until I was 10 I was there in the reign of terror at the climax of the Chinese Revolution. Many years later I was in Oxford and one night had dinner with my tutor's friend, Sir Isaiah Boleyn. And it turned out as we were talking, he'd been a 7 year old in the Russian Revolution and I was a seven year old in the Chinese. The two great revolutions of the 20th century. And we would compare notes and he was always grateful that the English speaking world with its love of freedom had come to the rescue against Nazism and especially against the Holocaust and all that that had meant to to him and his family. As a Jew, I can't imagine what he would think when he was comparing the United States and Britain all those years ago with the illiberalism and the anti Semitism in this country today. But this is the 250th anniversary. I've lived in Washington for four decades, heard umpteen State of the Union addresses, and always as a climax, the State of the Union is strong. This year, of course, it's your golden age. You're tired of winning. But I challenge you and I make this challenge as an admirer of this country. This is a year truly of celebration. Free societies are rare, lasting free societies are rarer still. So there's no question there's a great deal to celebrate. But it also needs to be a year of reflection and self examination because the Republic is in a dire crisis. We haven't time to think too widely tonight, but let me just sketch in a few simple things about which people are talking. I mentioned yesterday in the pastor's session. You can see we're at the climax of two huge trends over 500 years. The one, the influence of the Bible, leading to reformation, leading to freedom. And yet as it runs out today, we generally have a transgressive, unprincipled freedom that is chaotic. And the other trend, the challenge over the same 4, 5, 600 years of the rising modernity in its challenge to faith, ending today with unprincipled transactional power. And you can see it not only in the left, where it's obvious, but on the right too. Now, when you talk about the Republic today, and who does, I hardly know any politicians in Washington who talk publicly about the Republic. But if you think for a minute, on the one hand, there are profound alien ideas. So we have those who understand America from the perspective of the American Revolution 1776, but large swaths of this country who understand America from the perspective of ideas coming down from the French Revolution, 1789, higher education and many other spheres. There are ideas abroad entirely opposed to the Republic. But then again, in more ordinary circles, you can see the ignorance of what the Republic is. Make America great again, some people say, restore the soul of America, President Biden said. Biden never said what the soul was. But have you heard many people who praise Maga in saying what made America great in the first place? Very few of them know. But how can you restore the Republic and make America great again unless you know what it was built to be and established to be? It was truly, with flaws, a freedom like no other. Yet today there are few champions of it at a time when the global menace is unbridled power. You take the shifting of the platelets, as people talk about it, the shift from the weak gods of tolerance and so on, to the strong gods of blood and nationalism. You take the shift from the west to an increasing concentration on the world's greatest landmass, Eurasia, with the authoritarian Putin in the west and the totalitarian Xi Jinping in the East. Nietzsche, in the very last words that he ever wrote, says this. Do you want a name for my world? This world is the will to power and nothing besides. He was attempting what he called the revaluation of all values, overturning the Jewish and Christian critique of power and going back to the unbridled pagan view of power. And that's our world and the only counter to it, the biblical understanding. But the best, as the American Republic was set up to be. But who champions it today? I literally only know one. Of all the congressmen, I know a good many and many senators who actually speaks on it. Not many, to put it mildly. But the tragedy of all this is that the forgotten key should be one that we all know well, because it's biblical. If you go back to when the Church was made the official religion of Rome, 380, not Constantine, but Theodosius. You can see how the Church, wittingly or otherwise, unconsciously copied Roman structures. Politically, how did Rome run its politics? Caesar, consuls, senators. And what did the Church have for so long? Popes, cardinals, bishops, hierarchical power based on ranking and power. And as you know, the famous saying on power, power tends to corrupt. And all power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Who said that? A Catholic layman who loved his Church but disagreed with hierarchical power because, as he put it, it oppresses the weak, but it corrupts the powerful. And the story of the Church with that sort of political structure is the story of a thousand years of authoritarianism. Error has no rights. The inquisition. Tyndale, who 500 years ago publishes the first New Testament, translated from Greek into English, a pivotal moment in modern freedom. But as he writes, a young man in Scotland is discovered to have a piece of paper with the Lord's Prayer written in English. He's burned to the stake because of it. And as Heine said later, it was when people start burning books that eventually they will burn bodies. The Reformation, of course, said, that is Roman. Thomas Hobbes, the atheist, says, what is the church like that? It's the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting on the grave of the Roman Empire. And as you know, Calvin, Zwingli, Bullinger, Knox, Cromwell, they said, what's a more biblical way of doing politics? And as you know, in the 17th century, there's a rediscovery through the Reformation of what they called the Hebrew Republic. And was the Hebrew Republic hierarchical, based on power? No. What is it based on? Covenant. Covenant. And that notion of covenantalism is what shaped so much of the rise of modern freedom. Now we need to see that Sinai, the covenant at Sinai, is truly a singularity. There are other covenants outside the Bible. The Hittite treatise, there are covenants elsewhere in the Bible, like the covenant with Noah, the covenant with Abraham. They're different. But the Sinai covenant has distinctive uniqueness. God is a partner to the covenant. It is with the whole of the people, not just between leaders, and it covers the whole of life. And that notion, as the reformers wrestled with the notion of covenantalism, came down in very practical ways to shape their understanding of politics. A very simple thing. The consent of the government. Where did that come from? Exodus. When the Lord proposes his covenant, he doesn't impose it, he proposes it. And three times it says in Exodus, all that the Lord says, we will do, what Michael Walzer of Princeton calls an almost democracy, the consent of the government mentioned in your own Declaration of Independence. But it goes back to Exodus. And the covenant, of course, is a morally binding pledge. It's not like a legal contract, narrow. No, no, it is a morally binding pledge. What many centuries later, Martin Luther King would have called a promissory note. In terms of the Constitution and the Declaration, it needed to be cashed in. But it was a promise made and a promise to be kept. But not only that. You can see that the covenant has a reciprocal responsibility of everyone, for everyone. Love your neighbor as yourself. You love the stranger. You were strangers in Egypt. Our Lord adds, love your enemies. There's a mutuality, a solidarity. The Jews say, every Jew responsible for every Jew, every American citizen responsible for the Republic and for other American citizens. This is not individualism. And those ideas came down now in England. It failed. The Republic lasted a mere 10 years. It was the lost cause in England. But here it was the winning cause. So what was the Mayflower Compact? A covenant. What was John Winthrop speaking about on the Arbela? A covenant. Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were not exactly the most devout of the framers, but they both chose incidents from Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea as the suggested symbols of the United States. They were not accepted. John Adams says, the Jews have done more to civilize humanity than any other race. Why? Because of those principles of covenantalism. Now, in the bicentennial in 1976, one of the most famous books was by Robert Bellah from Berkeley, the Broken Covenant. And tragically, since then, Bellah showed how The Covenant over 200 years had slowly faded, so that the collective solidarity had given way to individualism and self interest and so on. But although the book was widely read and thought about in 1976, there has not been a single attempt to replace and reexamine the Covenant in the years since then. The Republic is on its last legs. Not America, the Republic. Now, that, of course, does raise the question, decline or renewal. And we have immense things to add here. I would just mention two. First, we as people of the word, people of the scriptures, we know these principles that are the first principles that are fundamental to freedom. Carl was mentioning human dignity. We could go on down the line in terms of freedom. These things have become empty cliches in so much of America. But we know. But actually, many Christians don't. I read so many Christian stuff on how to do politics, which begins with Romans 13 and Revelation 13. Now, the early church was under an imperial dictatorship, no room to move. But the American Republic, a free republic, is based on the Hebrew Republic. But why don't people explore the founding of God's nation and these magnificent first principles which should be underlying any society that wants to have a high view of human dignity and a strong view of liberty and responsibility. But let me mention the other great contribution we bring, and that is the hope of renewal. These things must not become cliches. We've got to believe in this with every fiber of our being to make them real. Too much of the great words in America, they're just empty cliches like freedom.
- [18:12]
Chloe Cole
No.
- [18:13]
Os Guinness
Why do we believe in renewal? Have you ever thought there was no freedom in the ancient world? No renewal? Because everything was a matter of fate in your stars, the Delta Oracle, you name it, fate, nothing you could do. You think our modern world, we talk of freedom, but have you ever thought there isn't a single leading atheist who believes in freedom? They're all determinists. Marx, it's economic determinism. Freud, it's psychological determinism. Dawkins, it's genetics. Sam Harris, you've gone down the line. There isn't a single leading atheist with a high view of freedom because of determinism. Where does a high view come from? The scriptures made in the image of God. God treats us as free and responsible, and the grounds of freedom are in the Bible. And we who are Jews and Christians should be the great champions of these things today. Now, that means in terms of renewal, a very simple but profound thing. If you take the secular view of history under the sun only, all you have is the pairing of decline and fall. So nations, like individuals, we're born, we grow, we flourish, we mature, we decline, we die. No question. Nations rise, flourish, decline and fall. Neil Ferguson says to all you Americans who believe in exceptionalism, the real exceptionalism in history would be a nation that didn't consider itself exceptional in its time. Great book coming out this year on the revolution. The greatest nation in the history of mankind. The greatest nation so far. The Romans thought that. The Spanish thought that. The British thought that. If you stop the clock in 1897, say at Queen Victoria, 60th Britannia ruled the waves. A quarter of the world was under the Queen Empress. But Kipling, Rudyard Kipling had the good sense to write that same weekend in the London Times, a famous poem, Recessional, with the recurring line, lest we forget. But why is it that we as followers of Jesus and our fellow Jews too, why is it that we don't believe in that automatic, ironclad decline and fall? The answer is that's not the biblical pairing. The biblical pairing, and this is what gives us hope, is not decline and fall, but exile and return. Yes, if we leave the way of the Lord, there are personal, social, national consequences. Adam and Eve are east of Eden. Cain was a wanderer in the earth. Israel was captive in Babylon. And the church, as we know, time after time, has become declining and corrupt and a shame. And much of American churches today, we bring shame on the name of the Lord. Even those of us who. I am an unashamed evangelical, although evangelicalism in America today is toxic and not something that brings the good news of the Lord to this country. But exile is not the last word. Now, ironically, you remember what was the passage they gave the president to read 2 Chronicles 7, and that's the only one a lot of people refer to. But if you know 2 Chronicles 7, if my people and so on. Solomon didn't do it, he was quoting the words of the Lord. Yes, he didn't do it. He flouted. All the kings were warned not to do, in terms of wives and weaponry and resorting back to Egypt. And if you read the books carefully, as the rabbis point out, the end of Solomon's reign has the same words used of captivity under Egypt. He had become a Hebrew pharaoh with slavery of the foreigners and conscripts of his own people. And in his son's reign, because of that, the kingdom was divided forever. Solomon did not do it. He spent twice as long building his own temple, his own palace, as he did the temple. Monumentalism is never the secret to lasting freedom. What they should have done is go back to Moses and then trace the story all the way through, even to the final Hebrew prophet, Malachi. And there you have it, much clearer. If you return to me, says the Lord, I will return to you and restore your fortunes. And you think of the story of the church. Desperate times. But then, revival, awakening, return to the Lord. As GKS Justin put it so memorably, once six times, the church has gone to the dogs, and in each case it was the dog that died. Revival, revival. My own ancestors came to faith in the first Awakening. And many of you know what the first Awakening did in saving England from the conditions that led to the French Revolution and what it did in this country in the lead up to the American Revolution. You can see it in the film now, the Awakening. The Lord knows we need a revival in that powerful way. Thank God for the local revivals, like the revival at Asbury College or the revival at Hope College. But we need to pray that such a revival, and I distinguish myself between renewal and revival and awakening. You can see a lot of things that are renewals that you can explain sociologically. They're real, but. But they're not the conviction of the power of the Spirit under the impact of the Word leading to a conviction of sin. My great grandfather, at the grand old age of 23, was the lead speaker in the Irish revival of 1859, touching a huge portion of the island. And in the year after that revival, there was only one recorded crime. The impact of profound social transformation was amazing. So, yes, the American Republic is in crisis, but we know the first principles, biblical, covenantal, reformational, which can be the wellspring of renewal of the American Republic today. And more importantly, we know and we're able to pray to the Lord to bring an awakening and do that which we cannot do. And by his grace, not only in this country, and not just local, but nationwide. And please Lord, covering the even deeper darkness in Europe too. But wouldn't it be wonderful if we join hands with our brothers and sisters all across the world, the global world, in standing together for societies with human dignity, with high views of freedom and justice and responsibility? This could be the only under the Lord, counter to what Nietzsche called for. And we see today this menace of authoritarianism totalitarianism is leading us already led the Chinese to an inhuman future. Combine that with artificial intelligence in the hands of authoritarianism and it's leading us also to an inhuman and a posthuman future. And who are the people who have the secrets of the word of the Lord and the treasures of the Gospel? Who can be the champions of a better way today? Shame on us if at such an hour we are only complaining about the darkness or outraged by the horrendous things that are happening. We should be. But we should also be the champions of a better way forward.
- [27:35]
John Stonestreet
Scripture offers us the capital T true truth account of the world as it actually is.
- [27:41]
Os Guinness
If this is the story of the
- [27:43]
John Stonestreet
world, there is a storyteller in a world that says live your truth. Christians have the responsibility to live out the truth. Truth Rising the study explores the true story of the world through creation, fall, redemption and restoration. You'll see this cultural moment through the bigger story of reality written by God. Start this free Study today@colsoncenter.org study that's colsoncenter.org study
- [28:14]
Maria Baer
well, I hope you enjoyed hearing just now from Os Guinness, this year's Wilberforce Award winner at the Colson Center National Conference. It was incredible to be in the room. And as a reminder, if you want to experience being in the room, go to colsoncenter.org July and you can access all of the footage from this year's national conference for a gift of any amount. Now I'd like to share with you the talk that we heard from Chloe Cole. Many of you know Chloe. She is a detransitioner. She is someone who fell prey to some of this disastrous transgender ideology when she was a teen and searching for her identity and meaning. And by the mercy of the Lord, she has come out on the other side re embracing her gender as a woman and just has a powerful voice for truth and compassion. And it was really a privilege to hear her at this year's Colson Center National Conference. So we wanted to share that with you now. So here is Chloe Cole.
- [29:11]
Chloe Cole
I often wonder whether we may be even more divided than we were during the mid-1800s now I can't say for sure whether we are because I haven't been alive for long enough to have lived through the Civil War. I don't think that any of you guys have either, but if you have, please, you're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong. One thing we can all agree on though, is that there is a clear divide on just about any issue that comes to mind. And it is so much bigger than just politics or mindless social issues because the definition of reality itself has been blurred. And if we can't agree with on what is real, then we can't agree on anything. This rift amongst us has made its way into our schools, into our workplaces, into our institutions. And for many of us, it's ripped apart. Our families and our children have been caught in the crossfire. Even the church, which needs to be at the forefront of these issues of our culture, has largely shied away from entering the conversation out of fear of furthering the divide. But because of this failure of so many churches to be proactive, so many people in our culture and in our nation have rejected truth. Not just moral truth or scientific truth, but the absolute biblical truth has been set aside for self absorbed ideologies. One of the most egregious examples of this has been pharmaceutical companies, medical professionals and health care providers rejecting morality for money by pushing experimental, medically unnecessary and yet permanent life altering drugs and surgeries onto children and mutilating their bodies in the name of an alternative truth, what they like to call transgenderism and gender affirming care. Medical professionals today look parents like wine in the eyes and tell them that God made a mistake when he made their children, that they will only be happy on the inside if they change who they are on the outside. These so called doctors treat kids like they have the judgment of fully grown adults, while they lie to them that they can reject nature. Adolescent children who are confused and insecure are allowed to choose the course of the rest of their life. And they, the physicians, strive to become God by saying we, we can change the truth for you. We can turn a beautiful young child, a young girl into a boy, and young boy into a girl using drugs and gender affirming surgery. To them, this is salvation. To us, we recognize this as a systemic abandonment of the duty that every single one of us has to take care of. Children are most vulnerable. And I know in my heart that that is exactly what it is because that's what they did to me. And they have done the same to thousands, at least tens of Thousands of other children throughout our country. At age 12, the doctors that my family entrusted with my life told all of us that it wasn't just a tomboy, that I had gender dysphoria, and I wasn't really a girl at all. I was actually a boy trapped in the girl's body. Before I graduated from eighth grade. They went on to put me onto a chemical castration agent to stop my puberty in its tracks. Later, they put me on high doses of male hormones to make me look like I was a young man. And at first, I thought I was happy because everything that they were telling me would happen happened. I started to look like a young man. I started to have all these effects on my body and my appearance. My appearance that made it so that the people around me recognized me as a young man. I was finally being paid attention to. I was able to make and keep friends. When I was going to high school, I got to kick down the shame of my middle school years, and I looked and seemed very different from the girl who I was before I even began to use male restroom and locker facilities. And honestly, I don't know how. That wasn't the point where I was like, maybe I should forget this whole being a boy thing. This sucks. This is nasty. But that awkwardness and loneliness is a given when you're a teenager. I was struggling to fit in the way that pretty much any other kid my age would be, and none of that meaningfully changed with the drugs. I was crumbling, in fact, under the weight of living a lie every day over my shoulders. I started battling depression. I began to withdraw. I gave up on everything from taking care of myself to my studies, even seeing my friends. Still, the first question I was asked every therapy session was, how's your gender dysphoria doing? What about your gender? So that was always at the forefront of my mind. At age 15, I went back to the doctors with my parents, and they talked to my parents about giving me a double mastectomy, surgically removing my breasts before I was old enough to drive a car. It was supposed to ultimately help me feel more comfortable in this new identity. And I was told, let's give it more time. The peace I was promised never came. The suicidality and anguish I was told will be prevented by this treatment came because of it. In fact, one of the most serious problems within the transgender community is the unbelievably high rates of suicidality. These radical doctors and activists point to this as a justification for continuing to mutilate children. They claim that Attempted sex changes are actually suicide prevention, that they are life saving interventions. But the real reason why all these confused kids attempt suicide is because they don't think that they will ever find peace. Whether they realize it or not, they know deep down that they are ignoring their own instincts and that of everybody around them. It's why they get so angry upon being misgendered or any reminder of biological reality. If medical transition can be best compared to anything, I think it would be addiction. Because you're constantly chasing the next high, you're chasing the next change. It starts with your clothes and then your hair, and then you jump into puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, surgeries. And with every new treatment comes an even more irreversible stage. But the difference between transitioning and addiction is that your own doctors are facilitating your self destruction. Most addicts have the ability to become sober again, but nobody can ever relive their childhood. This is why we as believers have a responsibility to step in. Time is of the essence for these kids and young people who've been led astray. They have no idea that the peace that passes all understanding can only be found in Christ. He is the absolute truth. What we need today is courage to tell that truth. We are about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation. But what we are really honoring is the lives of the individuals who who had the courage to stand in the face of danger, who risked everything for the futures of their bloodlines and for the freedoms and luxuries that today we might take for granted. But today we are faced with a new dangerous lie trying to convince us that there is no such thing as absolute truth. We are surrounded by people everywhere who believe that reality and morality are subjective, that violence in the name of politics is just, and even basic boundaries like male versus female have been thrown away. Are we willing to take a stand as we watch everything we know and love be destroyed? How can we afford to sit by and not stand up as we see evil walk amongst us? How will we not have courage to? One thing that Charlie once said that stuck with me for a long time, is that when the conversations stop, that is when the violence begins. He was very plainly aware that because these radical ideas like transgenderism were going largely unchallenged, increasingly dangerous ideas have been wreaking havoc on our institutions and young minds. And the results have been disastrous. On the day that he was martyred, he was proven right. The consequences of remaining silent could not be any clearer than now. The longer we cower away from the difficult conversations, the more difficult it will be down the road for every single one of us. The silence has led to outbursts of violence because people have been allowed to comfortably simmer in their own bubble for so long that dissenting words have become criminal to them. This is not the kind of world that we want our children, grandchildren, and those who will come in, the generations after them will have to grow up in. We can sit on our hands, we can waste our time worrying about the consequences of speaking up, but why don't we start pondering the impact of doing so? Yeah, you might ruffle some feathers at the Thanksgiving dinner table. You might lose some friends. Someone might walk out of the congregation saying some not so nice words to you. But if you keep speaking up, you will gain a reputation as somebody who unabashedly stands up and speaks for their values. And more than anything, I think that's exactly the kind of person that people are wanting to see around them, that they are waiting for. By speaking up, we can encourage other people to do the same, to have that courage for themselves and build alliances. By challenging these radical ideas, we can not only change hearts and minds, we can also strengthen our own ability to defend our position by listening to what it is that the other side is trying to say. Having the courage to speak eventually will give us the courage to act. At some point, we have to take the responsibility upon ourselves to make sure that the American legacy that we all carry was worth the sacrifices made by the men who came before us because they didn't fight for a country that foregoes justice, that rewards criminals, punishes victims, mutilates children, kills the unborn, and no longer abides by the ultimate moral code given to us by God. And that responsibility didn't end with those men. It's been passed to us. We're being called not just to speak for our values, but to actively live them out and be an example for everybody around us to look towards. So go, assemble. Go forth into the world. Reach out to your community. Show the confused and hurting around you that there is another way and another life for them. Look after the vulnerable and the innocent and make sure that your values will be passed down to the generations that will come after ours. Because our time is now. A lot of you are probably wondering just what it is that gave me the courage to stand up after living through what I did and continuing to face the consequences of it and be vilified for it through it all. And to be honest, I think I needed to suffer. I needed to suffer in order to wake up. I wasn't raised in the faith. I didn't really have a moral foundation to inform me in the way that I lived my life for almost two decades. So I tried to find that sense of meaning in other things that eventually served to hurt me. The worst of these idols that I worshiped was transgenderism. And the mastectomy was, in a sense, my transgender baptism. It was the moment that I thought that I was going to be reborn. I pledged my allegiance to this new lifestyle, and I thought that I finally was going to become a man. But it actually was the moment that broke me the most. I tried so hard to be happy. I tried so hard to justify this loss in my life. I thought maybe I just. I feel sad for now because that's the cost of going through a life saving change. But one day the scars are going to be gone, and I'll finally be happy, and I'll be this young man who I wanted to be. But none of it was true. No matter how hard I tried, no matter what drugs, no matter what parts of my body I got taken off, I still was a woman. And I only realized that when I took a class in psychology my junior year. And I learned about maternity. I learned about parenting. I learned about how a mother raises her child, how that shapes them into the person they become when they're an adult. And that was when I had this epiphany that I actually was very feminine, that I had this desire that I didn't know was there before, but now it was burning. I wanted to become a mom. I wanted to have children of my own naturally. I wanted to become a wife. I wanted to live through all these things that before I was too immature. I wasn't grown up yet enough to understand. That broke me, realizing that I had no breasts to nurse my future children with anymore. Because of how young I was when I began these drugs, I may not ever be able to have children or give birth. I didn't know it then, but the pain that I was experiencing, part of that was actually God speaking to me. He gave me that time to reflect. He allowed me those tears. He allowed me to grieve, to get the opportunity to finally stand up for myself and embrace the way that he wonderfully and beautifully created me as a woman. Even though in doing so, I lost every single one of my friends. I lost all my support from the transgender community, people who I used to see as almost a second family. I refused to do anything but stand up because I was finally fully Convicted in who I was. A daughter, a woman, an aspiring wife and mother. It was only after I met other detransitioners, these other young victims. And I learned that I wasn't alone in this regret and in my decision to go back that I began to feel called to speak. I started thinking about the kids in the clinic who I saw, some of them much younger than me, looking as young as maybe 11, 12, who were on the same drugs, who were about to get the same surgery. I thought about my own future children, having to live in a world where a doctor could do the same thing to them. So I broke my silence when I was 17, and I never looked back. That ended up being one of the most fulfilling choices I've ever made in my life because I've made so many friends, I've made so many alliances. I've had so many meaningful experiences that I wouldn't have before. In just the span of four years, I've been to five countries in 49 states to advocate for the protection of children. But I don't think I'll ever be able to count how many hearts and minds I have changed. I started by testifying on legislation to protect kids, to ban these procedures, because I believe in my heart that this is medical abuse. But over the years, I started to think speaking to the law is not enough because this is affecting the people. This is affecting families, and people my age are facing most of the brunt of it. I have to talk to people who are my age about this. I have to speak to the students. And so I began speaking on campus as well. And I have had so many days where people stormed up to me expecting a fight. And we end the conversation laughing and hugging. Even friends of mine who are detransitioners have told me, I used to hate you. I used to hate your message. I used to hate everything you stood for until the same thing happened to me. But people like you helped me understand that I didn't have to be trapped in a lie or let my suffering from my mistakes define me for the rest of my life. On the other hand, as I grew in notoriety, it became apparent that what I was up against was true, unadulterated evil in plain sight. And now I was the target. I became the kind of person that I hated before. The very first few times I testified, ever. The first few times I spoke in public, I was chased down. And then I was assaulted. I got tripped in government buildings. And since then, over the years, the physical intimidation has continued. The threats against my life have Continued. I've been told that I deserve to die in the same way that Charlie did, that I should be ashamed of myself, that I should end my own life, that I should shut up. I've had bomb threats called into my events where I was speaking. I've had to postpone events before. But you know what? None of that has ever deterred me because they could never silence me. I know what I stand for. I am only more convicted. Seeing this evil in the flesh has made me realize that evil is a real thing. But what I also learned is that there is a force of true, absolute good above us. I didn't know it at first, but I was entering a ministry. I still felt ruined. I didn't always know what I was standing for or why I was still here. Until one day somebody told me, like Esther, you were born for such a time as this. That was when I realized nothing. I went through not the pain nor sadness, nor the grief, was without meaning. It all was part of a beautifully written story that God is still writing for me, that he's writing for all of us. He was preparing me this whole time for this calling. And now I understand that my story is not over yet. And that's a lesson that I have to share with other people to show them that no matter what they've lost, no matter how broken they feel, God is always there with us. Because of how strange and, I guess, extraordinary my journey seems. A lot of people assume that I must have been this very academic, very educated girl, that I had an excellent support system around me around the time that I detransitioned. I sometimes even get people asking me, were you homeschooled? Which that might actually be one of the greatest compliments I've ever been given, but shout out to homeschooling. But I actually dropped out of public school just months before I began my advocacy. I didn't think that I was going to make it to 18 years old. I didn't have any friends left, and foreseeably there wasn't a good future ahead of me. I didn't know how things would work out, but I just felt this fire inside of me telling me, you need to do something about this. You can't just not say anything about what happened to you. So I made a Twitter account, and it all started with a few posts. All of a sudden, within less than a month, thousands of eyes were upon me and I started being called to speak in the news, which my first ever news broadcast. I went silent for 10 seconds because I was so nervous and I thought, this is the end. I've already screwed it up. I haven't even spoken in public before and I can't do this. Why am I doing this? But I just kept going. I just kept trusting that things would work out. And now I'm here. I've survived years later to tell the tale, to share it with other people, and to help others speak up not just about the evils of transgenderism, but against the evils that are in our culture. If that lonely, heartbroken 17 year old girl I used to be could choose to take a stand, there is no reason why anybody else couldn't. It's never going to be easy to take a stand. It's not easy to speak out or to act. But as it was written to us in John 8:32, if people know the truth, then the truth sets them free. Ultimately, we're not in a battle against other human beings. We're in a battle of the spirit against the forces of evil. In Revelation 12:11, we are reminded that we can overcome spiritual battles by the blood that Jesus shed on the cross and by the word of our testimony. We can help set people free by sharing the truths that we've learned from our own stories. We can make a difference, but only if we have courage. Courage to stand, courage to speak, and courage to act. Making that difference starts with us.
- [58:08]
John Stonestreet
Has AI made humans replaceable? Do the promises of AI outweigh the perils? What does it mean to be human in an AI age? These are just some of the questions we'll be exploring during a Free livestream event on August 6th. We'll be joined by John Stonestreet Abdoumuri, Gretchen Huizenga, and John Lennox, leading thinkers on faith and AI who will help us understand how to navigate this new technological landscape, considering our role as image bearers of God. This event is free, but registration is required. Register today@colsoncenter.org livestream that's colsoncenter.org livestream
- [58:50]
Chloe Cole
well,
- [58:50]
Maria Baer
I hope you enjoyed listening this week to Oz Guinness and Chloe Cole, two of our incredible speakers from this year's Colson Center National Conference. If you want to hear more of the talks, we covered topics from AI and human dignity, the Church's calling in this cultural moment, to religious trends among Gen Z, how to engage with skeptics, and so many more. I encourage you to go to colsoncenter.org July to access the rest of the footage from this year's Colson Center National Conference and consider joining us next year. It always is a really enriching and wonderful time together. I love getting the chance to meet so many of you as well as to hear from all of these incredible speakers. Otherwise, for the Colson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer and alongside John Stone's street, on his behalf, I'd like to wish you a great week and we'll see you all back here next time. God bless.