BreakPoint

From its very beginning, secular humanism has, in various ways, promised to save the world. Not only have these promises failed, but no coherent vision has even been offered of what a “saved world” would look like. Like the progressives of today, who promise progress without any fixed definition of better or worse, all that’s left is a pursuit of pleasure, to enshrine self-expression as the highest good. In other words, it was the abject failure of secular humanism that gave birth to the cynical postmodern ethos of today.

Fifty years ago, on January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court fabricated a so-called “right to abortion” out of thin air. This travesty of justice, which enabled the deaths of tens of millions of innocent little souls, deserves a place among the absolute worst legal decisions in American history. In fact, additional flawed moral and legal reasoning soon followed in Casey v. Planned Parenthood and Doe v. Bolton, built on Roe v. Wade’s flawed moral and legal reasoning, rendering almost all restrictions on abortion, however mild, “unconstitutional.”

By seeking and studying what God has revealed, we can make God’s thoughts our thoughts. We have, Paul wrote, the mind of Christ. We can know His design for human beings and for marriage and family, the purpose of government, the rightful end and object of worship, the significance of art and music and the place of science, and especially what has gone wrong with our world and what He’s doing to set it right. The ultimate goal is not to know things about God or even about His mighty acts in history. It is to know Him, and as Jesus put it, to love Him, with all our heart, soul, and mind.

Princeton University is considering a petition, signed by nearly 300 members of the campus community, to remove a statue of John Witherspoon. According to the petition, “paying such honor to someone who participated actively in the enslavement of human beings, and used his scholarly gifts to defend the practice, is today a distraction from the University’s mission.” In place of the statue, the petition requests an informational plaque that would describe both the positive and negative aspects of Witherspoon’s legacy.

This week marks the death of Amy Carmichael, missionary to India and defender of children. Though she died in 1951, she is a profound example of not only being faithful to the Gospel but of what being faithful to the Gospel means. Throughout history, in fact, Christians have taken the lead in defending children.

In his memorable “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr., threw down the gauntlet in his great Civil Rights crusade when he refused to obey what he regarded as an immoral man-made law that did not match up with the law of God.

Throughout the biblical texts, music is also connected to prophecy and to dealing with evil spirits. Jesus and the apostles sang a hymn after the Last Supper, according to two of the Gospels. The Apostle Paul specifically associates singing with being filled with the Spirit in his epistle to the church at Ephesus. And, in John’s Revelation of what is constantly happening around the throne of God, there is lots of singing, sometimes accompanied by harps. Music also is part of the culmination of the creation story. 

Our universe, even as Our Universe portrays it, compels worship, leaving us with the sense that we need to, as singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson put it, “thank someone.” Yet, in this series, created glory is acknowledged and celebrated with gorgeous animation, wildlife cinematography, and musical score, all without giving glory to the Creator behind it.

According to the BBC, doctors in Greenland inserted contraceptive devices into several thousand local women without their knowledge or consent. This was not a once-off action by a few rogue doctors. Rather, this was the result of a decades-old policy of the ruling Danish government.

Last fall, cultural observer and former BuzzFeed writer Anne Helen Petersen published an e-book about the difficulties of motherhood during the pandemic. Based on interviews with 1,000 women, her conclusions were telegraphed in the title: The Moms Are Not Alright. I think most parents would agree that parenting during a pandemic is, well, not ideal.