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Stonestreet: The Sexual Revolution: Its Ideas and Its Victims

What grounds human dignity? Without the answers that the Christian ideas of inherent dignity and equality provide, the culture turns to sex.

In the first session at the 2019 IFI Worldview Conference, John Stonestreet spoke on what it means to be human. In his second lecture, available here, he speaks on the sexual revolution and how culture has completely sexualized their answer to what it means to be human. After identifying the three major ideas of the sexual revolution, Stonestreet presents the redeemed reality of these ideas in light of the human dignity God has given us.

Please watch and share this video (1 of 5) with your family. This presentation is a great opportunity for group study and discussion.

You can watch this presentation on the IFI YouTube channel, and find the other worldview sessions here.

Background

John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He’s a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetics. John is the daily voice of BreakPoint, the nationally syndicated commentary on  the culture founded by the late Chuck Colson.

Before coming to the Colson Center in 2010, John served in various leadership capacities with Summit Ministries and was on the biblical studies faculty at Bryan College (TN). John has co-authored four books: A Practical Guide to CultureRestoring All ThingsSame-Sex Marriage, and Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN). He and his wife, Sarah, have four children and live in Colorado Springs, CO.

You can follow him on Twitter @jbstonestreet.


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Marijuana and Psychosis

The pitfalls and perils of marijuana legalization are well-documented. But whenever we discuss that research here on BreakPoint, we’re accused of not having the right research. What that means is that we’ve used studies that contradict the very vocal advocates of weed.Well, let’s see what happens when we cite The British journal The Lancet, which, along with the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, is considered the “gold standard” for peer-reviewed medical research. It doesn’t get more “real” than being published in The Lancet.

A just-published study in The Lancet involving, among others, researchers at King’s College London, compared 900 people who had been treated for psychosis with 1,200 people who had not. Sample participants were drawn from across Europe and Brazil.

Both groups were surveyed on a host of factors, including their use of marijuana and other drugs. The study’s authors concluded that “people who smoked marijuana on a daily basis were three times more likely to be diagnosed with psychosis compared with people who never used the drug. For those who used high-potency marijuana daily, the risk jumped to nearly five times.”

By “high-potency” the researchers meant marijuana with a THC content of more than ten percent. To put that figure in context, a study of the weed seized by the DEA between 1995 and 2014 found the THC content went from about 4 percent in 1995 to 12 percent in 2014.

Today, it’s not uncommon to read of marijuana that’s legally-sold in places like Colorado with THC content above 20 percent, occasionally 30 percent! Legalization advocates minimize the exponential growth in potency by saying that twenty or more years ago, Americans didn’t have access to “the good stuff.”

Well, that misses the point by several astronomical units. The point is that those people who daily use “the good stuff” are five times more likely to find themselves in a hospital suffering from delusions and hallucinations, to name only two symptoms of psychosis.

Now, critics will respond, “That’s correlation, not causation.” And that’s the criticism leveled at journalist Alex Berenson, author of “Tell Your Children: The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence,” a book I recommend highly. But as I heard Berenson say just last week in Denver, of course it’s correlation and not causation. The only way to prove causation would be to ask half a sample group to experiment with something that may harm them. That’s not ethically possible. By the way, all the studies that made us believe that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer were correlated studies too, but that was enough to convince us all.

Even so, writer Ron Powers doesn’t need a peer-reviewed study to convince him of the link between marijuana use and psychosis. In his 2017 book, “Nobody Cares About Crazy People,” he tells the moving story of his two sons, Dean and Kevin, who were both diagnosed with schizophrenia in their late teens.

As Powers tells readers, while there is a strong genetic component to schizophrenia, there is no “schizophrenia gene.” Instead, it’s a constellation of genetic and environmental factors that make people susceptible to schizophrenia. One of these, as Powers painfully learned, is heavy marijuana use, especially in the teenage years.

Of course, some people will tell you that they and most people aren’t mentally ill, so there’s little if any risk. But for a host of reasons, no one can know that with certainty. In fact, all pronouncements about how safe marijuana legalization is simply overstates the case.

That’s exactly what happened here in Colorado. The possible pitfalls were denied or downplayed. And so, Colorado now holds the dubious distinction of leading the country in first-time drug use. And the rate of monthly marijuana use among 18-to-25-year-olds in states with legal weed is nearly three times as much as states that haven’t legalized it.  By the way, 18-25 is the age when schizophrenia often begins to manifest.

And since legalization, Colorado has seen a a spike in marijuana-related emergency room visits by people between the ages of 13 and 20.

Given the well-documented mental health risks, especially to not-fully-formed adolescent brains, the rush to legalization is the height of irresponsibility. An irresponsibility that can shatter lives. And don’t just take our word for it.

Resources:

NJ marijuana legalization: Don’t do it:

  • Stephen D. Reid and Kevin Sabet | app.com | March 14, 2019

This article was originally published at BreakPoint.org.




Worldview Work Isn’t Optional

Some are saying that Christians have lost the culture. But what if it was never a war to win, instead it was a calling to embrace? If there is an overarching theme for BreakPoint—starting with Chuck Colson and now with Eric Metaxas and me—it’s culture.  Specifically, how Christians can understand it, engage it, confront it, even restore it—through the clarity of a Christian worldview. As Brett Kunkle and I explain in our book, “A Practical Guide to Culture,” what we mean by culture is not some mysterious thing cloistered in art museums. No, culture is the sum of everything we as human beings create, write, say, do, and think—the marks we leave on our world. In that sense, “engaging the culture” isn’t really optional. It’s human. It’s as much a part of being alive as breathing is. We don’t decide whether we’ll engage the culture. Just how.I say this because lately, a few people have suggested that Christian efforts in the culture have failed. One gentleman recently wrote me saying that worldview-style training like the kind we do in our Colson Fellows Program or at Summit Ministries or other places like that just hasn’t worked. We’re losing the next generation, he said, and mainstream culture is as dark as ever.

But I want to push back against this idea, at least on a couple of fronts. First, it just isn’t true! You can’t convince me that the work of people like Francis Schaeffer, Chuck Colson, David Noebel, or the work of groups like Summit Ministries or the Colson Center, teaching Christians how to approach culture from a Christian worldview hasn’t made a difference. I’ve seen young faces light up when they get this Christianity thing for the first time, realizing it’s true, and that faith relates to culture. I’ve seen too many to believe that it hasn’t made an impact. I was one of those faces in 1994 thanks to Bill Brown and Gary Phillips.

And stats back me up on this. Far from the doom and gloom we often hear in the media, and from Christian sources, the Church isn’t collapsing in America. In fact, evangelicals have one of the highest retention rates of their young people of any Christian group.

And to say that “worldview hasn’t worked” is to ignore the incredible inroads made in the academy in our lifetime. Consider that the entire discipline of philosophy was flipped on its head in the late 20th century by people like Alvin Plantinga. Consider the amazing progress in law, not only now, but the seeding of jurisprudence by the folks at Alliance Defending Freedom. Consider the gains of the pro-life movement. All of these were either directly or indirectly inspired by Christians taught to engage culture armed with Christian worldview thinking.

What this thinking has done, through ministries like Colson Center and programs like BreakPoint, is offer an antidote to the toxic assumption that Christianity is just something you do on Sunday in the pews; that Christianity is personal and private. No way. Christianity is personal, but it’s not private. Every square inch of human existence belongs to Christ.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m under no illusion that things are going great in the culture. No, Christians are facing incredible challenges around the world. And in Western culture, it’s all but lost any sort of privileged position it once had.

But here’s the kicker: at the Colson Center, we don’t teach worldview or champion the idea that Christians should “engage culture” because it “works.” It’s not a strategy, folks. We do it because we’re redeemed human beings, and because redemption is in line with, not opposed to, our created purpose.

Christians shouldn’t make art, write literature, compose music, build businesses or any of these things to win a kind of war against secularism. We do these things because they’re part of what it means to be truly human. And that’s what Jesus saved us to be—fully human worshipers of God with all of our lives.

So yes, the worldview movement and its emphasis on culture has made a difference. I know the beneficiaries by name. But we don’t teach worldview or engage culture for strategic purposes. We do it because Christianity isn’t Christianity without it.

As Chuck Colson would often say, Christians are to “make the invisible kingdom visible.” We do just that by intentionally engaging the culture around us in every sphere of life God has called us to. A great way to take a deeper dive into engaging the culture is to become a Colson Fellow. Click here to find out more about applying for the next class in the Colson Fellows Program.

Resources

A Practical Guide to Culture

  • John Stonestreet, Brett Kunkle | David C. Cook Publishing | 2017

How Now Shall We Live?

  • Charles Colson, Nancy Pearcey | Tyndale House Publishing| 2004

The Mark of the Christian

  • Francis Schaeffer | InterVarsity Press Publishing | 2007

Worldview Conference May 5th

Worldview has never been so important than it is today!  The contemporary culture is shaping the next generation’s understanding of faith far more than their faith is shaping their understanding of culture. The annual IFI Worldview Conference is a phenomenal opportunity to reverse that trend. This year we are featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet on Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Click HERE to learn more or to register!




Religion, the Great Economic Engine

A few months ago on BreakPoint, I mentioned a Pew study that demonstrated Americans’ increasing ignorance of the vital role played by religious institutions in this country. Between 2001 and 2016, the percentage of Americans who think that religion plays a role in solving important social problems fell from 75 percent to 58 percent.

As I said at the time, “part of the problem is that the religious contribution to the common good is so woven into the fabric of American life, most people these days just take it for granted and never stop to think about how prevalent it really is.” In fact, according to another study, half of Americans think that the government could replace religious organizations with no problems and nothing lost.

And now, a new study quantifies just how wrong half of Americans are.

Published in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research in Religion, the study quantifies that “religion in the United States today contributes $1.2 trillion each year to our economy and society.” That’s “trillion” with a “tr,” or “more than the top ten tech companies combined—including Google, Apple, and Amazon.”

Put another way, if American religion were a country, it would rank 14th or 15th among the world’s economies, just ahead of Russia and just behind Australia. Put still another way, religion accounts for a little under seven percent of our economic output.

Now you still think that religion can just be replaced?

The study conducted by Brian and Melissa Grim of Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs reminds those willing to listen that the nation’s 344,000 religious congregations aren’t just houses of worship, “they are also the nucleus of many communities.” They are the “centers for job training, charity, child care, and social events.”

They employ “hundreds of thousands of people, creating jobs, and spend billions of dollars on goods and services, which support local businesses.” And finally, they fund 1.5 million social programs and gather 7.5 million volunteers.

As Brian Grim put it, the benefits of religion aren’t intangible, nor are they limited to the members of these congregations. People of faith serve the vulnerable because of their faith.

A little-known example of this outreach are the 78,000 programs that help “people struggling with mental illness.” That’s three times as many programs as there are Starbucks in the entire world! Yet, while people joke about how ubiquitous Starbucks are, no one takes note of how all-pervasive these programs are.

Without these programs, the communities that rely upon them would be far worse off than they are. And yet an increasing number of Americans think religion can just be replaced.

In light of these findings, think of the recent attempts to force churches to go along with the sexual revolution in places like Iowa and Massachusetts. Both efforts assume a private/public distinction that, as the report documents, just doesn’t exist.

For many congregations, what it means to be the Church isn’t limited to the four walls of their sanctuaries, and their understanding of what it means to love their neighbor isn’t limited to the folks in the pews. That’s why churches form the nucleus of so many communities.

In effect, proposals like the ones in Iowa and Massachusetts punish people of faith for loving their neighbors as themselves. Worse than that, they’re willing to sacrifice the vulnerable among us in the furtherance of the ideological projects of the sexual revolution, a revolution that has already left millions of victims in its wake.

As Brian and Melissa Grim make unmistakably clear, there is no area of life that Americans care about, or at least should care about, in which people of faith, motivated by their faith, are absent. And their presence is making an incredible difference.

Even if people refuse to notice.

FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

Religion, the Great Economic Engine: More Proof Faith is Good for America

When you hear people say we don’t need religion in public life, set the record straight. And be sure to check out the U. S. News and World Report’s article below on the economic value of religion in America.

RESOURCES:

Could Religion’s Decline Spell Damnation for the U.S. Economy?
Andrew Soergel | US News & World Report | September 14, 2016

No Christianity, No Hospitals: Don’t Take Christian Contributions for Granted
John Stonestreet | BreakPoint.org | July 28, 2016


This article was originally posted at BreakPoint.org.