The psalmist, David, was truly a man after God’s own heart, but he watched his own family ripped apart by his son, Absalom. Parenting issues plagued the patriarchs too. Ishmael’s behavior was a thorn in Abraham’s side. Isaac not only lost sleep over his twins, but was swindled by one of them. And Jacob had his fair share of headaches and heartaches with his 12 boys. At least when we come across rough patches raising our children, we know we’re in good company.

I remember well from my time in law and later as Attorney General how hard it was to find Christ-centered resources for parents whose young adults had spun out of control. That’s one reason I was so encouraged to learn about a ministry called Shelterwood.

Shelterwood is a licensed Christ-centered residential home for troubled teens with two campuses in Missouri. They provide individual, group, and family therapy for teens who may be struggling with low self-esteem, depression, suicidal thoughts, oppositional defiance disorder, or addiction.

The name Shelterwood comes from a term in forestry. It is when larger, more mature, trees are used to shelter the smaller ones that cannot stand the intensity of the sun. These older trees serve this function until such time as these tender saplings have reached maturity.

Through Christ-centered counseling, mentoring, and discipleship, lives are being changed at Shelterwood.

Take for instance a girl I’ll call Mandy. When Mandy came to the campus she couldn’t even bear to sit in the same room with her mom. There were reasons. Mandy had grown up in a home with an alcoholic and abusive father. Her mom tried to hold the family together, but everything came undone when she discovered her husband had been sexually abusing Mandy and her other daughter. Mandy needed more than what was available in her own community, and by the grace of God, her mom made contact with Shelterwood.

Once at the center, Mandy initially continued her pattern of isolation, fits of rage, and lies. But soon the love of her “big sister”—the name given to the staff person assigned to Mandy—broke through. Mandy began opening her heart to the healing love of Jesus. She explained later, “For the first time I wanted change.”

Mandy found reconciliation with her mom and also with Jesus Christ. She went from failing school to graduating high school and being accepted into college. God used Shelterwood to change the course of her life.

If you are out there listening and you have an out-of-control teen on your hands, I want you to know you are not alone and there is hope. Redemption is God’s specialty. Places like Shelterwood exist across the country. Don’t be ashamed to seek out the resources you need to help your teens. And don’t give up on them. God hasn’t.

They’re probably not checking their email on those smartphones. This is a generation that considers email passé. They’re into social networking sites—sites like Facebook and Twitter. It’s networking that consumes their attention and hours of their time every day–and they don’t always use it wisely.

For example, twenty-eight percent of young social network users admit to sharing information online that they would never have shared in public if they were face-to-face. And 22 percent—that’s right 22 percent–say that they’ve posted pictures of themselves or friends.

As Dr. David Murray, Professor of Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary notes, technology has changed the way we “study, play, socialize, shop, and even apply for jobs.” Believe it or not, one out of eight couples married in the US met on a social networking site.

Murray, the father of four, is a firm believer in the good of technology. He is also well aware of the dangers—especially the dangers to children. After thinking through how to best teach his own children how to thrive in the digital age, he produced a short video: “God’s Technology: Training Our Children to Use Technology to God’s Glory.” In it Murray shares biblical wisdom and applies a Christian worldview to kids and technology.

He begins with four biblical principles. First, God created technology. He made the physical elements like silicon that we use to make digital devices. He made the forces of electricity and magnetism that allow technology to work. And he made human minds and gave them the creativity to build computers, cell phones and iPads.

Second, because God created technology, it is not inherently sinful; instead (principle three) it has many good uses—including bringing BreakPoint to you every day. Finally and tragically, Murray notes, technology has been abused because we are sinners.

How does that apply to our children?

Well, because technology is created by God and has good uses, we should want our children to enjoy technology’s benefits. But we can’t ignore the dangers and embrace the digital world without what Murray calls “disciplined discernment.” And Murray gives sound, practical parenting advice concerning Facebook, where children desperately need that disciplined discernment.

As Calvin College professor Quentin Schultz wrote in his book Habits of the High-Tech Heart, “Cyberculture offers us no means to rise above the entropic noise, no dwelling place to catch our breath, gather our wits, discern our course, and become more intrinsically moral people.”

If we and our children are going to use digital technologies wisely and morally, it will be because we make an intentional effort to apply our Christian worldview to technology.

And the video “God’s Technology” is a great place to start. Visit BreakPoint dot org, click on this commentary, and we’ll tell you how you can get the video and other resources to protect your kids online.

Joni Eareckson Tada, a Christian author, artist, and activist, was in the audience that day. As you probably know, a diving accident back in 1967 tragically left Joni a quadriplegic. Since then she’s been a tireless advocate for disabled people around the world.

Joni’s ministry, Joni and Friends, has provided everything from gift baskets to wheelchairs for the disabled. But perhaps the single most important thing that Joni does is, as her website puts it, “aggressively promoting life, human dignity and the value of all individuals—despite their disabling condition—from a biblical perspective.”

You see, ministering to the disabled taught Joni something about the sanctity and value of every human life. That’s why she takes a strong and principled stand against abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and other practices that demean and destroy life. That’s why she has fought for people like Terri Schiavo, who couldn’t fight for herself. And that’s why she supported the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Don’t see the connection? Well, let me take a moment and read you something Joni wrote for CNN’s website:

“I believe most of us recognize intellectually that we are all created equal, but we need to help children and young adults go deeper in understanding what disabled people contribute to society and how valuable they are as human beings, not just to God, but to all of us . . . This was our original intent with implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act 20 years ago, and it must remain our goal as a society that no one, no matter how disabling the condition, is discriminated against—not just in deed but also in word and attitude. To have real social change, we must have heart change.”

Well, as you can see, for Joni, helping create better access and equal opportunities for the disabled was never about political correctness or government expansion. It was about something that goes much deeper than that: shaping a society that reflects and embraces the God-given value of each human being. It’s about demonstrating in practical terms what it means to honor, respect, and care for the ones Jesus might have called “the least of these my brethren”—the ones who need a little assistance from the rest of us.

It’s about helping them live full, productive lives. Isn’t that what a biblical worldview is all about?

Joni wrote in her article, “I pray everyone will join with me in honoring this 20th anniversary by renewing our own personal commitment to check our attitudes, get over our own fear and discomfort, and befriend the person behind the disability in our own community, church, workplace, school or neighborhood.”

That’s my prayer as well, and I hope it will be the prayer of all of you. Honoring and advocating the God-given sanctity of human life begins with honoring the life of the person right next to us, including the disabled.

Busyness is a problem all of us face. In fact, a 2007 study asked over 20,000 teens and adults if “the busyness of life gets in the way of developing [their] relationship with God.” The response? Six in 10 Christians said they are too busy for God.

Are you? That’s the question which Ann Kroeker poses in her new book, Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families.

Of all the groups most affected by the busyness epidemic—perhaps the American family has been the worst hit. A self-assumed pressure to make sure the children get every opportunity to give them an edge academically, socially, physically, and even spiritually, pushes us to push them. But somewhere in the process, something is getting buried. And it might just be our souls.

In her new book, Kroeker quotes Pastor John Ortberg as saying, “For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so busy and distracted and rushed that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.” It is hurry which, he goes on to say, is the great enemy of the spiritual life.

One of the things I appreciate most about Kroeker’s book, Not So Fast, is that she examines the motivations that can get families to this point. These are motivations for safety like: “The best way to keep kids out of trouble is to keep them busy.” They are motivations based in competition, like: “An abundance of activities and volunteer work looks good on college applications.” And they are motivations based on keeping up an appearance, like: “We feel important and indispensible when we’re busy.”

The trouble is when we dig down deeper with motivations like these and others, Kroeker points out, we find that many of them are based on fear, envy, pride, insecurity, and a love of the approval of man. And as we squeeze every last drop out of out of our days, our children are getting squeezed in the process.

For the Kroeker family, it took a serious illness for their family to begin to see what a mind- and soul-numbing pace they had been living. That wake up call was what it took for them to slow down.

I like the fact that the book, Not So Fast, doesn’t suggest mere cookie-cutter approaches for what families should do to regain balance in their lives. Instead it invites us to examine what’s at the root of these choices, and to repent of the motivations when they are based in sin. And then it offers a variety of suggestions for helping families make much more meaningful connections both with each other and God.

As Kroeker says, “For everyone who yearns for the benefits of a slower life, I want to point to Jesus and say, ‘Start here. Start with the One who offers true and lasting peace.’”

She’s right. Not So Fast is a book Christian families need, if only we’ll slow down long enough to read it and heed it.

According to a recent Kaiser study, if your teenager is awake and isn’t in school, he or she is staring at a screen a smart-phone, a computer, or watching television.

The authors claimed to have been “shocked” by the results.

Kaiser’s researchers interviewed more than 2,000 kids between the ages of eight and eighteen. They found that, on average, the participants in the study spent seven and one-half hours a day using these devices! What’s more, that figure understates the amount of time American kids devote to consuming media and other related activities.

For instance, it does not include time spent actually talking on these smart-phones or sending and receiving messages. That adds another one and a half hours to the total. When you add time spent doing several media-related things at once, that is multi-tasking, American kids spend the equivalent of eleven hours a day tethered to an electronic device.

The authors were “stunned” because they believed that media consumption among kids had already maxed out when they last measured it in 2005. What didn’t take into account, either then or now, is what drives the heavy usage: dread of being bored.

As one 14-year-old told the Times, “I feel like my days would be boring without” my smart phone. It’s not only him. As New Testament scholar Ben Witherington recently wrote, smart-phones “are seen as the cure for boredom.”

This “boredom” is “in most cases…the state of mind of those who lack imagination and therefore require all kinds of stimuli to prevent them from losing interest in things, and even in life.” That’s why people, adults as well as kids, are “constantly fiddling with their cellphone.” The alternative to all this fiddling is being alone with your own thoughts, which terrifies people used to the constant stimulation provided by our media-saturated culture.

Happily, parents can help their kids to avoid this trap. The Kaiser study found that parents can make rules limiting this kind of mindless media consumption and that their children will follow them. It won’t be easy but, then again, swimming against the cultural tide never is.

Speaking of swimming against the tide, even more important than rules and limits is teaching our children that we don’t need constant stimulation. On the contrary, being quiet and still is an essential part of the Christian life. We are told “be still” so that we may learn who God is. God spoke to Elijah in a still small voice.

Neuroscientists tell us that many, if not most, of our most creative and productive moments come when we step back from all the stimulation and let our minds be free. In other words, what many people call “boredom” is good for us in ways that the constantly-stimulated can’t begin to imagine.

We’re not talking about letting our minds wander just anywhere. What we’re told to do is invest our life in a relationship with Christ. In His word, in prayer, and in meditation.

Unplugging and stepping back for some time alone with God is yet another reason for us to unplug our kids and ourselves and risk being bored. For all the right reasons.

People are angry. Very angry. Angry at BP. Angry at the President and the administration for the way they responded. Environmentalists are angry at the oil companies. Others are angry at environmentalists, who back regulations that force the oil companies to drill in deeper waters.

And, as I found out recently, many are even taking out their frustrations on those who are responding . . . who are trying to contain and clean up the mess.

One of our BreakPoint Centurions sent us an email describing the situation. He’s involved in the clean up efforts. “On two separate occasions,” he writes, “police had to be called out because protesters were attacking the responders who were cleaning the beaches…Responders (These are Coast Guard, EPA, state employees, volunteers). All have been threatened and denied services in some communities along the Gulf.”

While frustration, anger and lashing out, are very human responses to tragedy, I am saddened that some responders are on the receiving end.

So I want to share the thoughts of our Centurion as to why so many of these responders are doing what they do.  Here’s what he wrote, and I hope it inspires you:

“I would humbly suggest,” he writes, “that the responders are demonstrating the God-given commission to be stewards of this world.  The individuals who are responding are putting their lives at risk in the heat…Many of them have gone through a minimum of 40 hours of training (to just be around the oil), and those who are rescuing wildlife have gone through even more training.

“Those who are involved in response are devastated to find dead wildlife and to see the soiled shores and marshes, because they are personally invested in defending and cleansing these precious resources.”

He continues: “When our world was covered with the toxic coating of Sin, Jesus came down into the midst of it to cleanse and restore the world to the way it ought to be.

“I saw a powerful picture today of a pelican being released in a part of Florida that is far from the spill.  It was an amazing and beautiful thing to see this cleansed bird to be free once more.

“At this point,” he concludes, “so many people are numb at the pictures of the devastation . . . but the unappreciated sacrifices that I see each day inspires me and inspires my faith in Christ because I see people sacrificing their time and talents to restore the created order and to defend the birds of the air, fish of the sea and beasts of the field from the very impacts of this deep undersea oil volcano.”

Well, all I can add to that is, “Amen.” As we pray for all those who are suffering loss of life and livelihood as a result of the oil spill, let us remember as well to pray for those men and women who are working so tirelessly to contain and clean up the damage, and to restore God’s beautiful created order.

But a new book reveals how important it is to reach out in love to those we may perceive as different from us, or even feel uncomfortable with, including Muslims.

In her new book, titled The Imam’s Daughter, Hannah describes her upbringing in the north of England in a Muslim neighborhood. Like all Muslim children, Hannah was taught that she must submit to Allah’s will.

But Hannah hid a terrible secret from her school friends: Her father—the respected local imam—was sexually abusing her. He told Hannah she was dirty and worthless, that she’d never be good enough for Allah. Hannah longed to run away, but the only people she knew well were fellow Muslims who would return her to her father. A suicidal Hannah wondered, why was life so dark and abusive?

When Hannah was 16, she began attending Sixth Form College. On her first day, she met Mrs. Jones, the school counselor. Mrs. Jones began to gently share Jesus with Hannah, but Hannah refused to believe that God was anyone but a cruel, avenging being who laughed at her misfortune.

And yet, it was Mrs. Jones whom Hannah turned to when she discovered a frightening secret: Her father was planning to take her back to Pakistan to marry her off to a cousin.

Mrs. Jones immediately took Hannah into her own home. Life in Mrs. Jones’ home was a whole new world for Hannah. She wasn’t beaten when she made mistakes. The Jones family openly expressed affection with one other, and with Hannah. A few weeks later, as the Jones prepared to go to church, Hannah asked if she could come. She wanted to know more about this God who led people to invite a stranger of a different race and religion into their home to protect her and love her.

Hannah was amazed to see people praying for the needs of other people around the world regardless of their religion. If this love came from God, Hannah reasoned, perhaps she should get to know Him. Christmas Eve, she asked Jesus to come into her heart. She was filled with a sense of God’s presence and love.

When Hannah’s family got word of her conversion, they showed up at her house with 40 men armed with knives and hammers. They beat on the door, screaming that they were going to cut her throat. Hannah was forced to go into hiding. In time, she moved away and married a man who was also following Jesus. She began a ministry to Muslim girls who are threatened with violence and even death if they refuse an arranged marriage.

You know, Hannah’s story is a reproach to those among us who view Muslims as “the enemy,” and prefer to have little to do with them. But The Imam’s Daughter, besides being a great read about a brave young woman, shows us that we need to reach out to everyone, including Muslims, to show them the love that God has for them through Jesus Christ.

That gift of love—something we are commanded to do—may ultimately lead them into God’s eternal kingdom.

Or imagine walking into a four-star restaurant, and seeing a sign reading: “The county government recommends that you dine somewhere else.”

Now imagine these nutty signs might be required by law. Believe it or not, in Maryland, lawmakers have ordered signs like these to be posted—but only in front of one business: crisis pregnancy clinics. Signs that announce, not what the clinics offer—but what they don’t offer.

Baltimore and Montgomery counties in Maryland have passed laws forcing crisis pregnancy centers to post signs announcing that they do not provide abortions, that they don’t have licensed medical personnel on staff, and that the county health department recommends they seek a licensed health care provider elsewhere. Failure to post the sign gets you a $500 fine.

NARAL and Planned Parenthood are the groups behind these laws. NARAL describes the new laws as part of a new, nationwide strategy to take customers away from crisis pregnancy centers and funnel them to abortion clinics. Step one is to publish phony “studies” about how pregnancy care centers allegedly “mislead” women. The studies are, of course, conducted by NARAL. Step two: Join forces with pro-abortion lawmakers to pass laws that attack crisis pregnancy centers.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Maryland abortion clinics don’t have to post signs announcing services they don’t offer. For instance, they don’t have to announce that they don’t have adoption lawyers on hand. They’re not forced to suggest that clients go elsewhere—say, to a clinic that invites women to see their unborn babies on an ultrasound machine before making a decision.

Mark Rienzi, a law professor at Catholic University, points out the obvious to the Washington Times: The Maryland laws violate “every core principle of free speech law.” And he’s right.

The Baltimore City Council claims the new ordinance is about truth in advertising and patient protection. But crisis pregnancy care clinics don’t claim to offer abortions: Their advertising says they offer abortion alternatives, counseling, support, and free pregnancy tests. And many of them in fact do have licensed medical personal.

If Maryland lawmakers are really concerned about truth in advertising, they should talk to some of the millions of victims of abortion clinics. Women who say abortion clinics lied to them about fetal development. Women who suffered severe injuries or even death after being told that abortion is a safe and simple procedure.

Above all, they should be forced to tell clients that up to a third of all women who abort their babies regret it afterwards.

Maryland crisis pregnancy centers are suing over the laws forcing them to advertise services that they don’t offer. Good. We need to fight back when our freedoms are attacked.

Otherwise, one day we may need to post a sign in front of the Constitution. One that says, “Out of service.”

But he’s done something even more extraordinary—he’s brought good values into the mix.

Jobs has made it clear that he wants to keep pornography off Apple products as much as possible. Obviously Apple can’t control everything its users do, but it can make porn scarcer on its products, and it has done just that.

A British newspaper, The Guardian, reports, “So insistent is Apple [on this policy], many magazine publishers developing ‘apps’ for the new iPad . . . have had to self-censor.”

As you might expect, this has triggered a frenzy among some critics. Ryan Tate, a writer for the Gawker website, sniped at Jobs about suppressing his customers’ “freedom,” prompting Jobs to respond, “Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom.”

When Tate replied that he didn’t want “freedom from porn,” Jobs answered, “You might care more about porn when you have kids.” In a correspondence with a consumer, Jobs went even further, speaking of his company’s “moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.”

How refreshing it is to see someone who actually gets it—that yes, there are those of us who prefer to be free from the storm of smut that assaults us from every television, computer, and phone screen. The supply of pornographic material is so overwhelming that access to it is certainly not an issue of “freedom” anymore, if it ever was.

Jobs has pointed out that people who want to see porn on their phones, and who want easier access to it on their computers, can easily get all they want if they buy other companies’ products. But as he said in a press conference, “That’s a place we don’t want to go—so we’re not going to go there.”

What Jobs seems to understand, and what his critics seem to be ignoring, is that there’s so much more to pornography than just issues of economics or free speech. It shouldn’t even need to be explained, but apparently for some people it does: Pornography is an ugly, poisonous, degrading business for everyone involved, whether they’re making it, using it, or selling it.

As my colleague Kim Moreland recently mentioned on our blog, The Point, new studies are demonstrating yet again just how dangerous and addictive it can be. It tears at the fabric of marriages and families and of society itself. Its use is connected from everything to higher divorce rates to human trafficking to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Aside from the occasional reference to protecting kids (which is enough), Steve Jobs didn’t go thoroughly into the reasons for his policy. But for whatever reason, he truly is demonstrating corporate responsibility, the kind that we desperately need more businesses to show in this sex-obsessed society.

May he continue to stand by his principles, and may his tribe increase.

A recent study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that more than 60,000 adult inmates and one in eight juveniles in custody had been sexually assaulted in the previous year.

Some people think that prisoner rape is an inevitable part of life behind bars. But it doesn’t have to be. There are many well-run facilities across the country where it is being prevented—and this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, the government has extraordinary control over the lives of those it locks up. And the government can use this same control to establish rigorous measures to stop sexual assault in its tracks.

Next month marks one year since the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission issued a strong report to the Department of Justice on the scope of sexual assault in our nation’s prisons. The report also included practical policies to end it.

The commission took several years to do its work, holding hearings across the country and listening to hundreds of experts and corrections officials. Victims told about being vulnerable to predators; about how they were left to fend for themselves after brutal attacks. Dedicated corrections officials testified about how they tried to overcome systemic problems. The commission distilled these real-life experiences into a series of recommendations.

These recommendations focus on prevention, detection and response. In addition to zero tolerance, priorities include informing inmates that they have a right to freedom from sexual abuse, instituting more stringent hiring policies for correctional staff, using efficient methods of supervision, and banning intrusive cross-gender searches except in emergencies.

Unfortunately this effort to set standards and hold prison officials accountable has become bogged down in the bureaucracy at the Department of Justice. Attorney General Eric Holder has said he is committed to ending prison rape. But instead of taking immediate action, he is allowing his employees to spend another year reviewing the work already completed by the Prison Rape Commission.

In the meantime, more adults and juveniles in prisons are being sexually assaulted every day.

The attorney general has the authority to immediately move the nation’s prisons out of the dark ages—where sexual assaults are winked at—and into a new era of zero tolerance for sexual violence. And unless the attorney general finds a compelling reason to alter them—and it’s hard to believe he could—he must implement the proposed standards.

It’s time to stop the laughing and get serious about ending rape in America’s prisons. Whatever crime our nation’s prisoners have committed, being raped is not part of their sentence.

Please write the attorney general today at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, and urge him to adopt the standards set by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.