Welcome to Breakpoint, daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Here's a go after a college chapel service that featured a sermon about God as our Heavenly Father.

The person sitting next to me turned and said bluntly,

if God's a Father, I want nothing to do with Him.

She was speaking, of course, from a place of deep personal pain.

However, even the worst experience with an earthly Father does not change that God has revealed Himself,

throughout Scripture and specifically in the words of Jesus Christ, as our Father.

I thought of my friend in that chapel service during last week's Christian Twitter maelstrom,

on Wednesday that recently announced Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics at the Gospel Coalition,

published a book excerpt authored by Pastor Josh Butler.

The article described a sacred vision of the physical union of a husband and wife,

arguing that not only marriage, but the physical intimacy within marriage,

is a type of Christ and the church.

In the process, he used terms and imagery and made points that without additional contact seemed shockingly graphic,

almost immediately the Twitterverse exploded,

to crying the article as icky, cringe, even dangerous.

Within a day, the critiques of the article, even those that ask legitimate questions about Butler's terminetic method,

and the Twitter, his conclusions have been completely lost, caught up in an online outrage that had taken on a life of its own.

On Sunday, Gospel Coalition apologized for the article,

announced Butler's resignation as a Keller Center fellow, and noted that he would not be speaking at their 2024 conference.

Author and blogger Raj Raer summarized the reaction to the article as,

...