You're listening to Breakpoint this week where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian worldview.

Today we're going to talk about the top stories of the year.

As we look ahead to 2024, we're going to talk about the stories that shaped our world

this year and the ways our culture is changing both inside and outside the church.

We're so glad you're with us. Stick around.

Welcome to Breakpoint this week from the Colson Center for Christian Worldview I'm Maria Bear alongside John Stone Street

president of the Colson Center. Well John we are recording this a few days in advance, but we are staring down the barrel of

2024, which still sounds like a science fiction year to me. But to my kids, it sounds totally

normal. My daughter asked me the other night what year I was born and I said 86 and she said 2086 and I said oh dear and I felt very old and then I sat in a quiet room for a little bit. But as we always do, we do this every year. We do sort of like a yearly wrap up, let's look back at the year we just had, and then also look forward into next year a kind of show.

And so I want to start today with asking you, what do you think was the major story coming out of 2023 and I don't necessarily just mean news

story we're gonna put we're gonna have some different categories here so I would

say obviously a major news story Israel is to be a big one, but I also want to look at

cultural stories, stories that maybe give us a you are here type of moment. But let's just

start with an open-ended biggest story of the year in your mind.

Well, I don't know what all criteria you want to kind of, you know, load on to this question,

but I think Israel meets all of those, the attack of Hamas on Israel.

Yeah. And then Israel's response, because it does pull out all kinds of things, both

geopolitical, religious, worldview, and cultural.

First, it was just a reminder of radical Islam.

And I think by and large, we had kind of forgotten that.

Most of the geopolitical conflicts around the world

were between, you know, some sort of despotic and tyrannical

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