Theology in Christmas Carols, Miracle with Haiti Missionaries, and Transphobic Technology - BreakPoint This Week

John and Maria revisit a recent BreakPoint commentary that highlighted the theology in Christmas Carols. John highlights how many carols highlight the Incarnation as an act of war against evil, discussing how this imagery has fallen out of favor in pop-Christianity but holds significance inside church history and tradition. Maria shares the recent story of the escape by a number of missionaries in Haiti from their captors. She tells how this is a miracle, recounting a few details surrounding the escape. John responds to a question from Maria about understanding calling in the wake of this event, as Maria is challenged by the missionaries resolve and passion to engage dangerous situations. To close, John and Maria revisit a number of troubling things coming out of China. They wrap up their conversation discussing some new technology that assigns gender to individuals in pictures using facial recognition software. The software is said to be transphobic, because it fails to assign the correct gender two-thirds of the time. John and Maria discuss the worldview significance of this and other realities surrounding this new technology. -- Recommendations -- The Magnificat with Wexford Carol Keith and Kristyn Getty Noble Warriors>> -- In Show Story Mentions -- -- Breakpoint Recap Share Christ with Christmas Carols the Bible presents the Incarnation as an act of War...That's something missing from the 24-hour holiday music stations, most Christmas plays and pageants, and many Christmas Eve sermons…[Christmas Carols] confront our culture with the whole story, with some of the finest Christian teaching ever produced by redeemed Image Bearers. BreakPoint>> Erasing Women Just because a man or a woman can do something without risking his or her identity doesn't mean he or she should do that thing. As Christians, we should always wrestle with how best to live out our God-given design as men and women, by asking questions like: "is this an honorable thing to do? Does this respect the body God gave me, or fight against it? Does it glorify God and His design? BreakPoint>> -- Hostage Missionaries Escape in Haiti 12 missionary hostages in Haiti made escape after receiving sign from God The 17 Christian missionaries were kidnapped by the 400 Mawozo gang after visiting a local orphanage in Port-au-Prince on October 16. The group, which was made up of Amish, Mennonite and other conservative Anabaptist communities, included 16 US citizens and one Canadian. Five of those kidnapped were children. Their Canadian driver was also kidnapped. On two occasions, he said the group received divine signs to stay put, but after receiving a sign to flee, they snuck out under the cover of nightfall following a sign on Dec. 15. "At times they felt God prepared a path before them," Showalter said. "God was leading them." NY Post>> Press Conference for Missionaries After the news conference, a group of CAM employees stood and sang, "Nearer My God to Thee" in the robust, four-part acapella harmony that is a signature of conservative Anabaptist worship Watch Press Conference>> -- China Issues Pile Up Chinese tennis star Peng denies she made accusation of sexual assault | Reuters Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai said on Sunday that she had never accused anyone of sexually assaulting her, and that a social media post she had made early last month had been misunderstood. Reuters>> Amazon agreed to allow only five-star reviews for Xi's book in China Amazon quietly removed criticism of President Xi's books by scrubbing bad reviews, ratings and comments from its Chinese site, it has emerged. The US retail giant agreed to Beijing's demand to have anything below a five-star review of Xi Jinping's book The Governance of China removed from Amazon.cn about two years ago, Reuters reported, citing two unidentified sources The London Times>> -- Transphobic Technology Is facial recognition software transphobic? Controversial tech 'has a gender problem' The controversial tech is now so accurate that it can figure out the gender of men or women with little more than a brief glance. But if that face belongs to a trans person, the systems get it wrong more than a third of the time, new research suggested. Study lead author Morgan Klaus Scheuerman, a PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder in the US, said: 'We found that facial analysis services performed consistently worse on transgender individuals, and were universally unable to classify non-binary genders. Metro UK>> David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College "Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real." FS Blog>>