On September 2, 1991, Chuck Colson took to the radio airwaves with his first BreakPoint commentary. That’s 25 years ago today.
But think of all that has changed since then. Technology? My goodness. The World Wide Web was only available to research universities. No Google. No Amazon.
And mobile phones were the size of your shoe! If you had to make a call on the road, you needed coins and a phone booth. And people still wrote letters to each other. On paper. With pens.
George Bush the First was president. Operation Desert Storm had just taken place. No 9/11. No Afghanistan. We didn’t know what jihadism was. And about a month after Chuck’s first BreakPoint, some governor from Arkansas announced he planned to run for president.
And culturally... well. Same-sex “marriage,” transgender bathrooms, these were simply unimaginable. And the idea that the government and major corporations would punish those who opposed such things—that would have been conspiracy thinking.
So much has changed since then. But the reason Eric Metaxas and I offer BreakPoint every day hasn’t.
Let me ask this: As Christians, we know things are not right with the world. But can we put our finger on why?
Or let me ask this: In the midst of our daily lives of responsibilities and distractions, when is the last time we stepped back and asked, “What is the purpose of life? What’s all of this for?”
Few of us ask the big questions about life, the universe, and everything else. In fact, we may not even know what the right questions are!
That was the topic of Chuck Colson’s very first BreakPoint commentary. Let me share part of it with you. Here’s Chuck, from September 2nd, 1991:
What are the right questions? Simple. Things like, What is truth? What is ultimately real? What are we living for?
Unless we realize that there are such questions--that all through history the great pursuit of humanity--has been for answers to these--then we [simply] flounder along, drifting with popular trends.
As Christians we are often offended by the immorality portrayed on television, in films, and in tabloids. And rightly so. But I suggest that we should be much more disturbed by something that goes much deeper: that our culture has stopped asking the big questions about the meaning and purpose of life.
So this is what I hope to accomplish on Break Point: to ask those questions, to take the issues of the day and hold them up to examination in the light of God's truth. To show that each issue reflects some facet of the big truths, the ultimate truths, that should guide our lives.
Big answers for the big questions. I hope you’ll join us.
And join us you have. And for that I want to express, on behalf of Chuck and Eric Metaxas and the entire BreakPoint team, my sincere thanks for your support and prayers and feedback over these past 25 years.
And I want to thank our ministry partners, like the radio stations who carry BreakPoint every day across the country. And the dozens of websites that carry the commentary as a column each day, and all of you, our faithful listeners and readers–-over 120,000 people receive this commentary by email every day. Praise God!
I’m so honored to be part of this legacy. Nothing means more to me than a parent who says that BreakPoint is a part of their family dinner, or like someone said to me just this week, BreakPoint is like a daily devotion to me.
I love that. So let’s keep asking the tough questions, and making sense of the world around us. Together, from a biblical worldview.
BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.
John Stonestreet, the host of The Point, a daily national radio program, provides thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
Publication date: September 2, 2016