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

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

What kind of world would unfold if smart, determined people lived as if Jesus really was the source of truth?

And that truth actually existed.

Well, those are the questions that shape a new book by my friend Dr. Jeff

Myers, president of Summit Ministries. It's called Truth Changes Everything, how people of faith can

transform the world in times of crisis. It's a book that's badly needed right now. You see,

as Jeff writes, even among Christians, the percentage who believe truth can be known has shrunk to around 50%.

75% of young adults say that they are unsure of their purpose and life. Half agree that, quote,

there is no absolute value associated with human life. And yet, despite this depressing but accurate picture,

truth changes everything is full of hope. After all,

Christians in every time, every place, every age have faced trials, setbacks, difficulties,

bad ideas, most greater than our own. Yet in the midst of those moments, the light of Christ has

shown brightly. In one example, that's particularly relevant on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic,

Myers describes how Christians face the bubonic plague in the 14th century. One-third to one-half of

Europe's total population died during the Black Death. And, as one contemporary wrote, quote,

one man shunned another. Kinsfolk held aloof.

Brother was forsaken by brother, oftentimes husband by wife. Nay, what is more and scarcely to be

believed, fathers and mothers were found to abandon their own children to their fate,

untended, unvisited, as if they had been strangers, end quote. Yet in the face of that calamity, many Christians simply lived differently.

St. Catherine of Siena was an example of someone who, when the plague reached her city in

1370, cared for its victims, changed linens, provided food, prayed, listened to deathbed

...