by Eric Metaxas NEW YORK (BP) — If you’re even a semi-regular BreakPoint listener, you’ve no doubt heard Chuck Colson — and me — talk about “breaking the spiral of silence.”

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Hebrews 11:8-28, 39-40

  Wayne Grudem is the widely-published author of Systematic Theology and co-editor of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. He has earned a Harvard BA in economics, a Westminster MDiv, and a Cambridge PhD in New Testament. When Grudem turns his attention to economics, he finds that commerce is to be commended as the source of great good. His book on the subject, Business for the Glory of God,1 argues that work in manufacturing and trade is a high calling. For one thing, it serves to alleviate poverty:

  An onslaught of restlessness hit Pastor David Wilkerson as he watched the remnants of “The Late Show” fade slowly from the television screen. He began to pace the room, calculating the amount of time he spent absorbed by the media’s lure every night—at least two hours. Wilkerson glanced at the ceiling and wondered aloud, “What would happen, Lord, if I sold that TV set and spent that time—praying?” Within a few minutes, Wilkerson determined that if God wanted him to substitute prayer for television, then He would allow him to sell the television no more than half an hour […]

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Hebrews 11:1-7

American Presbyterian minister Clarence Macartney was a prominent defender of orthodoxy in the 1920s. He was convinced that a culture indifferent or hostile to biblical truth was in grave moral peril. In his understanding, sound theology was the very lifeblood of society. In this selection from “Difficulty with Evolution,” he shows his high regard for the doctrine of creation and his alarm at its decline in the estimation of modern man. He blames Darwinism for erasing long-standing reverence for God and traces the ghastly lines of influence that secular humanism will follow. One may ask how Darwinism could have so […]

   Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in 1916 and, in 1921, founded the American Birth Control League (the forerunner of Planned Parenthood). Her name is widely associated with contraception and abortion, but she had another cause—eugenics. To avoid a public relations disaster, Sanger’s followers urged her to drop the topic, and she did, but not before going on record with some unsavoury statements. Here is one from her article, “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.” It reveals the spiritual poverty of this cultural icon and helps explain her willingness to declare war […]

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Hebrews 10:26-39

  Ever realize what the “Battle-hymn of the Reformation” (Luther’s A Mighty Fortress Is Our God) concludes with? A stirring call to kingdom-inspired self-denial—“Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still; his kingdom is forever.”

Charles Colson is the author of many books (including Born Again, Loving God, and How Now Shall We Live?) and founder of the international ministry Prison Fellowship. In 1993, he was awarded the famed Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. In the following piece, Colson points out how seemingly small matters of dress and conduct can fuel a more general, and serious, demoralization of culture.