Responding to False Cultural Narratives with Truth & Love

Heather Peterson, Ph.D. | Senior Editor

In the year and a half I’ve been editor, helping to operate the day-to-day function of Breakpoint, I’ve been impressed with our consistency in messaging. As I dig up old Breakpoints, particularly to seek out our founder Chuck Colson’s voice on worldview applications, I observe that we’ve not strayed from our mission at the Colson Center to “equip Christians to live out their faith with clarity, confidence, and courage in this cultural moment.”

One way Breakpoint fulfills that mission is by responding to false cultural narratives that undermine the truth. One such narrative was the media attack on Lorie Smith of 303 Creative, a web-design organization. A few months before I began at the Colson Center, the Breakpoint team produced a commentary on Smith’s appeal to the Supreme Court, asking that she be allowed her First Amendment right to refuse to create websites for same-sex weddings.

Note that she wasn’t rejecting working with an individual who was same-sex attracted—she wasn’t discriminating—her appeal was that she couldn’t create a website about a same-sex wedding in good conscience as a Christian. In response to her initial pre-enforcement lawsuit, the State of Colorado ruled that she must design such a website if requested. Smith chose to go the route of a pre-enforcement challenge because she wanted to legally question Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act before she was sued.

In early December last year, we shared another commentary on Smith and her lawyer, Kristen Waggoner, general counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, when their oral arguments were first heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. When the Supreme Court announced their decision in June, we celebrated this significant victory for free speech. However, the situation quickly soured, and the team at Breakpoint was right there to clarify the false narrative promoted by multiple news outlets that Smith’s challenge had been faked.

It was not only that news outlets did not bother to understand and properly report what was a pre-enforcement challenge, even the Colorado attorney general made derogatory public comments about Smith. The Breakpoint team separated fact from fiction to help you know the truth. Smith’s lawsuit was valid, and the interpretation of the Supreme Court supported the First Amendment. Time and time again, that’s our goal on Breakpoint: to walk beside you on a daily basis so that you can see clearly where false cultural narratives are undermining the truth, and to point to the grand narrative in which we all participate: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

We believe in free speech because all humans are endowed with dignity since they are made in the image of God. God created his image bearers male and female; thus, we comment frequently on the tragedy that befalls young people when urged to “transition” genders. We believe that Christ offers meaning to those struggling with depression and anxiety, and so we continue to explain the danger of social media usage and the slippery slope begun by assisted suicide. In these matters and more, we keep pointing to what is true and pray that God supplies you with the courage to do so as well in your own time and place.

HEATHER PETERSON Senior Editor

From a Recent Graduate In My Own Words

My name is Lexi Travis, and I have been a devoted listener of Breakpoint for a long time. I just graduated high school from Classical Conversations and will be attending Hillsdale College this fall.

During my junior and senior years of high school I began to discover a love for worldview study that I had not known, beginning with reading Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey and snowballing as I discovered Breakpoint. I then read more Nancy Pearcey, C.S. Lewis, Schaeffer, etc., watched Dobbs unfold, realized there were more Colson Center podcasts, and started listening to Upstream and Strong Women too, and so on.

The Colson Center and the concepts you discuss have played such a huge part in this watershed. It has shaped my understanding of the world I live in, and consequently who I’ve become, where I am going to college, my desire both primarily to be a mother and secondarily to pursue law ... in short, the Colson Center has been very instrumental in my life.

To give you a few examples, my senior thesis was on the fact/value split, for which, of course, many Colson Center concepts came up, most notably that ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. This same concept forms the core of a digital presentation I have competed in throughout the year and now have qualified and [competed] in the National Championships with NCFCA speech and debate.

I tell anyone who will listen about Colson Center podcasts. My older sister and parents all listen, so we talk about it regularly at home as well. I wrote in simply to tell you about the great debt I feel I owe to the Colson Center and how thankful I am for the content you put out, both on behalf of myself and others.

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