Feb 12, 2021 | Parents and Family
When we lived in Illinois we had gone to a church for a number of years that was large and typically Evangelical, but not Reformed. That was frustrating for me, a couple years before we left for Florida I started looking for a church that preached the doctrines of grace, as they’re called, and embraced Calvinism. I found such a church, New Covenant Church, and it so happened that the pastor is a fellow Italian-American, Chris Castaldo, who takes great pride in his Italian heritage. We hit it off when he learned of my last name, and he was a good friend while we were there. I was writing the book at the time, and he said he’d love to read it when it was published. It took forever, it seems, but he got the book and read it in only a couple days, and was very kind in his praise. He said he’d like to ask me a few questions, and post that at the church’s blog, and you can find that here.
Feb 6, 2021 | Explanatory Power
In my last post I discussed the explanatory power of Christianity, why it better explains reality as we experience it than any other religion or worldview. I wasn’t able to address why it isn’t only Christianity as a worldview that makes sense of everything, but specifically the gospel. Let’s start with our own consciousness. There are many common threads to how human beings encounter themselves and the world, but none as common as conscience. We, at almost every moment of our existence, encounter the notion of right and wrong, good and evil, and that none of us measure up to the standard, whatever we think that is. Because the moral law is built into the universe and into our beings, nobody lives up to their own standards, let alone those of a holy God. I don’t often quote Immanel Kant approvingly, but he got it right when he wrote in the Critique of Practical Reason:
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.
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Jan 29, 2021 | Explanatory Power
Ideas for blog posts often seem to come when I start praying in the morning. As has been my habit for almost seven years, every morning I wrestle my way through a text of Scripture and write my thoughts in my uncreatively named Walk Through the Bible blog. Contemplating the word of the living God, the Creator of all things, can’t help but inspire, so thoughts bubble up as I pray. Then I stop, say to myself, I have to write that down! Such is the subject of this post. I’ll explain why that may have happened with this specific thought at this specific time, but it goes back to a quote from C.S. Lewis I put on the cover of my book, and one of the most powerful apologetic (defense of the truth claims of Christianity) sentences I’ve ever encountered. It’s no surprise it came from the pen and mind of Lewis:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
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Jan 23, 2021 | Truth
1984 ain’t got nothin’ on 2020! And now, apparently, 2021. While this is a blog committed to Christian apologetics, the defense of the truth claims of Christianity, it is also committed to the defense of Truth. Since we live in deeply secular, postmodern times, Truth as objective facts regarding the nature of things has become a casualty of the times. As a Christian parent who has sought to persuade my children that Christianity is true, I’ve also sought to persuade them that the truths of Christianity apply to all of life, including politics, culture, economics, everything. So I’ve brought them up in a proudly American home, and taught them that America is a providentially exceptional nation that has brought more liberty and prosperity to more people than any nation in the history of the world. While flawed, because all systems filled with fallen human beings are flawed, America is something worth standing for, and fighting for. As Benjamin Franklin was supposed to have said coming out of the constitutional convention, we have a republic, if we can keep it. (more…)
Jan 17, 2021 | Apologetics
I made one of the big mistakes of my life back when I was a young Christian some four decades ago. I asked God to give me patience . . . . and I’ve been waiting ever since! Writing a book, and finally getting a version up I’m not embarrassed by, has been a long, long wait, especially when I was thinking that I’d be doing what I’m doing right now three and a half years ago. As I’ve learned over the years, God’s timing is never our timing. Just read the Bible and that will become readily apparent not too many pages in. I’m pretty stubborn, though (ask my family), and I was determined that sooner or later I would get the book published, and it was definitely later. As the title indicates, the third publishing option finally worked: Me!
A funny thing happened after all this time on the way to publishing fame, I no longer really cared. I just kept trying to knock down walls as they appeared in front of me, and after a bloody nose or two, I would find a way through, over, or around, and made progress. It also seems in spite of myself, and by God’s grace, through the process I found I’ve actually matured a bit in my Christian life. I’m still fundamentally rotten (increasingly) old sinful me, but I find it’s much easier after four-plus decades to “let go and let God.” I do hate that phrase, but it does capture something of the trust I have in him that comes easier than when I was a younger man and lived as if I was the master of my fate, and the captain of my soul. When I was young and naive and full of myself (I’m only half full now), I believed I could change the world. It didn’t take all that long for God to disabuse me of that notion, and it was rarely a pleasant experience. But God crushes those whom he loves so that they will put their hope and trust in him alone.
I have found over time that I can be a pretty persuasive fellow to those who are persuadable, and it seems I’m not too bad at it. You’d have to ask my children who have been the object of my persistent persuasion (often annoyingly so) over the years, but I think they would agree. So writing this book, and finally getting it published, has been a wonderful experience, even if it took way longer than I thought it would. If others are blessed by it, and the confidence in the faith of my brothers and sisters in Christ, parents or not, grows because of it, all the better. Now on to the next part of the journey, which is trying to promote it. I don’t know if anyone will be interested, but you don’t know until you ask. Actually, somebody already was, and I got my first interview. I’ll put that in another post soon, but there is nothing I love doing more than talking about Jesus!
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