Current Events – Family Council

Outsourcing Discernment in An Age of Mass Information: Guest Column

Oct 14, 2024John StonestreetCurrent EventsCurrent Events, News

Elon Musk recently found himself fighting the government of Brazil after his X social media platform was briefly banned there. Ironically, the censorship was marketed as a defense of democracy, i.e. the government “graciously” stepping in to save the people and the voting process from harmful disinformation.

Of course, claims of disinformation is a common tactic often employed by the powerful to silence critics. Once limits are placed on what can be written and spoken, many other liberties are at risk. Indeed, there are real dangers of an unchecked flood of information, too. In the introduction to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman described this tension by comparing Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984:

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

In the end, the explosion of information everywhere, all the time, has made us believe everything and nothing at all.

And our reputation precedes us. There’s been understandable concern about Russian interference in the last few U.S. Elections, but their strategy reveals as much about us as it does them. Imagine a group of operatives from Moscow planning and scheming how to dismantle America, and finally one of them announces, “I’ve got it! Memes! We’ll use memes to interfere with their democracy.”

Of course, it’s far more serious and strategic than that. In fact, it’s even more troubling how the interference from our international enemies resembles so closely the behavior of social media giants like Facebook and legacy media outlets. Shutting down conversations they don’t like and highlighting narratives they do is not the free exchange of information.

Over 30 years ago in First Things, C. John Sommerville wrote an article entitled “Why the News Makes Us Dumb.” His answer was that the very idea of “news,” as the name suggests, prioritizes novelty. To stay in business, the media “have to make each day’s report seem important, and you do this primarily by reducing the importance of its context.”

If we read philosophy, history, science, theology—regularly—we would be able to make much better sense of the day’s events. But we don’t. We’re too busy to manage anything but the News.

Sommerville wrote this before the internet was much of a thing and social media even existed. At the time, he was complaining about archaic things called “newspapers,” but his concerns proved prophetic. If people were “too busy to manage” one daily news reading back then, how can we possibly make sense of news firing at us all the time and from every direction now? The answer is, we don’t. In fact, many don’t even try. We prefer our “news” pre-digested and delivered to our feeds. In other words, we have outsourced the hard work of discernment to others.

Two-thirds of Americans get at least some of their news from social media, especially Facebook. Nearly three-quarters of X users rely on that platform for news. When Americans say they rely on “multiple sources,” they typically mean multiple social media sites, not a combination of traditional media and social media sites, or sources from multiple perspectives.

If Americans weren’t regularly reading “philosophy, history, science, theology” in 1991, it’s even worse today. In 1990, 16% of Americans hadn’t read a single book in the previous year. In 2015, it was 27%. Last year, it was 65%. Most of what was read isn’t helpful anyway. According to USA Today, between 1993 and 2013, the best seller lists were dominated by self-help and young-adult fiction. Today, people are mostly just reading their phones.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman presciently warned of a “vast descent into triviality.” Christians, because they believe that Christ is the truth and the Word, should always prioritize discernment, but especially in the information age. Otherwise, we risk being tools in somebody else’s arsenal.

The Attempted Assassination of a President: Guest Column

Jul 17, 2024John StonestreetCurrent EventsCurrent Events, Trump

Saturday marked the end of the longest span between domestic assassination attempts of U.S. presidents and presidential candidates since President Lincoln was killed at Ford’s Theatre in 1865. President Garfield was killed in 1881; Mckinley in 1901. Attempts were made at Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, and Truman in 1950. President JFK was killed in 1963 and candidate RFK in 1968. Candidate George Wallace was shot and survived in 1972, and two attempts were made at President Ford in 1975. The most recent domestic assassination attempt prior to Saturday was over forty years ago, when Ronald Reagan was shot and survived, and afterward quipped to his wife Nancy, “Honey, I forgot to duck.”

While the frequency of this violent history may be surprising, it does not diminish the horrific and evil nature of Saturday’s shooting nor the tremendous loss experienced by the family of Corey Comperatore. According to the New York Times, Comperatore died when he “threw himself over his family members to shield them.”

A former fire chief, Comperatore was also, according to his daughter,

[T]he best dad a girl could ever ask for. My sister and I never needed for anything. You call, he would answer. … [H]e could talk and make friends with anyone, which he was doing all day (at the rally) and loved every minute of it. He was a man of God, loved Jesus fiercely, and also looked after our church and our members as family.

Questions abound about this attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, from the motivations of the shooter to the seemingly unfathomable reality that the 20-year-old was able to reach an elevated position with direct line-of-sight only 130 yards or so from the President. There’s also the many “what might have been” questions, about the President personally and about the nation, questions that have only shudder-inducing speculative answers. And there are the worldview questions that arise in historic moments like this, about the reality of God and the role of divine providence in national and international affairs; and about the human condition, especially the frailty of life and the moral significance of our actions.

As Dr. Al Mohler helpfully articulated in The Briefing, “[L]ife and death can come down to the matter of seconds and to a matter of a millimeter.” The former president seems to also recognize that his survival was due to that level of precision, acknowledging to the New York Post, “I’m not supposed to be here. … By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God I’m still here.”

That it is by God and not luck, Christians know for sure (and it seems, so does the President). At the same time, this clear teaching of Scripture, that God oversees the affairs of men particularly in raising up and casting down those in power, is not easy to understand. Why would God spare the President’s life but not Mr. Comperatore? By all indications, Mr. Trump turned his head to a chart on a screen and was somehow saved. Mr. Comperatore made the decision to throw himself between his family and an assassin, and it cost him his life. How does that make any sense?

“Here,” Mohler continued, “Christians understand we have nowhere to go but the Doctrine of Providence. … It is essential to our Christian understanding of the world.” God’s providence extends to every moment of human history, not just the seemingly exceptional ones. The world is never outside of His control, even when the outcome is not as we hoped. Put differently, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was providential for both England and Spain. The fog that enabled the Dunkirk rescue was providential for the British, the Germans, and the entire world.

And yet, just as essential to the Christian understanding of the world is the moral capacity of human beings and the meaningfulness of human actions. A Hindu leader once noted to theologian and missionary Lesslie Newbigin,

I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole of creation and the history of the human race. And therefore, a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is unique. There is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside it.

There is no conflict between God’s sovereignty and man’s moral responsibility. In fact, the alternatives would be far worse. If no sovereign God exists, then life and all that happens is random and meaningless, except for some preferred interpretation we choose to impose on it. If all is predetermined, either by “nature” or by some heartless deity, we have no cause to expect better behavior of ourselves or others. The meaningfulness of our actions and the constant presence and oversight of our loving Creator may be difficult to reconcile, but it is a far better scenario.

Thus we can say, both truthfully and meaningfully, that God graciously spared the former president, that the shooter’s actions were evil and heinous, and that Mr. Comperatore was heroic to protect his family. We can also, truthfully and meaningfully, judge the words and the actions of ourselves, our leaders, and our press in response to this tragedy. We can act so that, by God’s grace, this kind of thing will not become normal. We can pray that, having lived through this attempt on his life, President Trump is brought to a place of gratitude to God and a sense of responsibility, rather than to a sense of entitlement. At the same time, we should pray that God’s grace and mercy covers the Comperatore family and that He will use His church to do so.

We should know also that our moral actions matter as well, as citizens and voters who follow Christ. How God’s people respond to this telling and troubling political moment will either point this world to Christ or not. So, here’s a prayer for us all:

O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people who call upon thee, and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.

Drafting Women Denies Biology: Guest Column

Jul 15, 2024John StonestreetCurrent EventsCurrent Events

Recently, the Senate’s Committee on Armed Services advanced the National Defense Authorization Act for 2025. The proposal would “amend the Military Selective Service Act to require the registration of women for Selective Service.” If the bill became law, every daughter, upon turning 18, would be required to sign up for the military draft, just as men currently must do.

This effort illustrates the confusion behind the contemporary call for equity instead of equality. Equality is about dignity. Men and women are equal in standing, dignity, and value, despite the significant differences between them. This understanding of men and women is, in fact, grounded in Scripture. As described in the first chapter of Genesis, God made his image bearers male and female. Both are made after His likeness. Each are, before God, equal.

Equity, on the other hand, grounds dignity in sameness. It demands that men and women are seen as identical. Difference, in this view, implies inequality.

The picture of humanity described in Holy Scripture is one in which men and women share sameness as well as difference. They are, in this sense, complementary to one another. In order to fulfill their God-given purpose to fill and subdue the earth, men and women partner. Both are required. In fact, in sameness and difference, we are like the God whose image we bear. As revealed in Scripture, God is Trinity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share the sameness of the Godhead, with difference in persons. When we presume women to be the same as men, we undermine what our natures reveal about God.

Because confusion about male and female is, in fact, a confusion about reality, it requires adjustments. For example, a 2017 Marine Corps study found that three out four women failed to meet combat standards in boot camp. Of course, there have always been women able to excel in the physical service of the military, but this is far from the norm. So, standards were changed.

In 2021, Congress delayed the implementation of the Army’s new Combat Fitness Test over the fear that 54% of women had failed to pass the requirements. In 2022, a new Combat Fitness Test was implemented with different requirements for men and women, both of which were significantly less demanding than previous ones. Women must now run two miles in under 23 minutes; men in under 22 minutes. Both must complete 10 pushups, yes 10.

The men and women who give themselves to serve and defend our country should be honored, and there are growing areas of military service not dependent on physical strength and prowess. However, in those many areas that are dependent, giving an assault rifle and a pair of boots to men or women unable to meet the physical demands is not wise or kind.

Even more, a part of God’s design for men is as protector. In the Old Testament, whenever women led in wartime, the men of Israel had failed. God still used, for example in Judges 4, Deborah the judge and Jael, a woman with a deadly nail, and both received honor over Barak. But it’s clear that Barak had first failed to lead.

This historic shift of how male and female are currently understood is a symptom of the bad ideas of our gender politics. God’s design was wise and good, grounding our dignity and yet acknowledging the real differences that exist. When that design is ignored, there are consequences, for individuals and for nations.

Right now, I’m focused on protecting my daughters from this national absurdity.

 This Breakpoint was co-authored by Michaela Estruth. If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.