Mar 25, 2020 | Theology
I’m working on a post about how Christianity completely transformed the world. In my other writing obsession, I’ve been writing my way through the Bible since April 2014, one of the best things I’ve ever done. God’s word is a bottomless well of profundity that gets more profound to me every day. Having come to this part of the well on love, I realized it is the reason that wherever Christianity goes it transforms (however imperfectly in a fallen world). Nothing of merely human origins can do what it has done and can do, and that’s only one of the many reasons Christianity is the Truth. Some thoughts on love: (more…)
Mar 18, 2020 | Explanatory Power
I can imagine that the title of this post would make people think there is something seriously wrong with me. There is! I’ve been afflicted most of my life with contemplating my own death, and, as I hit my early teen years, obsessing over what in the world it might mean. It blows me away that people will do everything they can to ignore the most obvious, and disturbing, fact of our existence: we die. It seems to never occur to them to ask what death means. Or why is there death. Maybe it’s a good opportunity to address this question with a pandemic known as the Coronavirus making its way across the world. Nothing like a scary pandemic to get people thinking about their mortality. (more…)
Mar 13, 2020 | Apologetics
If that question doesn’t make you laugh, you haven’t thought about it enough. I listened to a podcast the other day on the cosmological argument. Simply, it is a philosophical argument for God’s existence that everything that comes to exist has a cause, that there must have been a first cause for all the things that exist, and that this first cause must itself be uncaused. The logic is unassailable, even though otherwise intelligent people claim that something can somehow come from nothing. That would have to be the case if matter and the universe were eternal, but Einstein, the Big Bang, and the second law of thermodynamics kind of put the kibosh on the Aristotelian notion of an eternal universe (also known as the Steady State theory). (more…)
Mar 8, 2020 | Parents and Family
I recently came across an article at The Public Discourse called “The Best Practices—and Benefits—of Religious Parenting.” Given I have some interest in the topic, I was curious to see what these best practices might be. We learn that religion in general has positive outcomes for parenting. In an increasingly secular culture, studies that prove the positive influence of religion are a good thing. But something was missing from these best practices that to me is, by far, the most important single factor of religious parenting: truth. Why would anyone want to raise their children in a religion that they don’t believe to be the truth? Probably because they don’t believe in truth, at least when it comes to religion. If it works, makes you happy, etc., that will do. Most Americans believe that just because something is true for you doesn’t mean it necessarily has to be true for me. Or put simply, true for you but not for me! Such a contention is ridiculous on the face of it, but many otherwise thoughtful and intelligent people actually believe this. (more…)
Mar 5, 2020 | Culture
It’s become a cliche that we live in a “post-Christian” culture. This is shown in obvious hostility to Christians and their faith, but more perniciously when Christianity and God are ignored as if they are completely irrelevant to existence. The latter provides the most danger to our faith at the same time it provides the many opportunities to help strengthen it. The recently ended NBC series The Good Place is an example of both. It’s kind of funny, really, that in a show purportedly about the afterlife that God was persona non grata. We watched every episode of all four seasons, and I’m pretty sure the divine being didn’t even make a cameo. We can conclude, then, that God is not relevant to life, death, or even what comes after death. That’s the danger, that people think such a view of reality is reasonable and plausible, and go along their merry way without a thought of the judgment to come. But it’s also a great opportunity because you see how shallow, weak, and hopeless such a view really is. Ultimately, the ending shows us just how clueless the writers are without God’s revelation to them in creation, Scripture, and Christ. (more…)
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