Jul 10, 2019 | Apologetics, Explanatory Power
Too many Christians allow low-simmering doubt into their minds because the dominant Western secular cultural narrative assumes materialism at every point, that is that the material, matter, is all that exists. And, if materialism is true, Christianity is not. In the secular West, we are programmed to be materialists. From our earliest memories media, entertainment, and education are indoctrinating us into a materialist view of reality, as if it were the true nature of reality. It is not, and scientific knowledge is making it more untenable every day. Unfortunately the average Christian in the pew every Sunday doesn’t know this, and doubt easily creeps in: maybe, they think, this Christianity thing is a bunch of hooey. It also is not.
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Jul 8, 2019 | Epistemology - Trust
So much of life comes down to epistemology, what can we know, how we know, if we can know. It’s unfortunate that so few Christians realize this, or have ever come across the word. This is important because the credibility of Christian truth claims in the postmodern, post-Christian secular West rest on questions of knowing. The default epistemological stance of our age is skepticism; the hole is the thing, not the doughnut. And whether Christians are aware of it or not, this skepticism affects us too. My passion is to teach Christians to know that we can know! Beyond a reasonable doubt.
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Jul 4, 2019 | Theology
Since everyone else it seems has commented on the unfortunate and untimely death of Ms. Evans, I figured I would as well because there are important lessons to be learned from her short time on this earth. In case you are not familiar with Evans, she was an author, blogger, and provocateur who embraced something called progressive Christianity. This version of the faith is nothing new, having been invented, if you will, in the early 20th century amid the fundamentalist-modernist controversies. Those conflicts gave us “liberal Christianity,” the forerunner of the progressive Christianity of today. (more…)
Jun 30, 2019 | Notable Quotations
This sense of mission set Christians apart from other religious groups, including Jews, in the early Roman empire. The notion that it is desirable for existing enthusiasts to encourage outsiders to worship the god to whom they are devoted was not obvious in the ancient world. Adherents of particular cults did not generally judge the power of their divinity by the number of congregants prepared to bring offerings or attend festivals. On the contrary, it was common for pagans to take pride in the local nature of their religious lives, establishing a special relationship between themselves and the god of a family or place, without wishing, let alone expecting, others to join in worshiping the same god. Christians in the first generation were different, espousing a proselytizing mission which was a shocking novelty in the ancient world. Only familiarity makes us fail to appreciate the extraordinary ambition of Paul, who seems to have invented the notion of a systematic conversion of the whole world, area by geographical area.
—Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations
Jun 29, 2019 | Explanatory Power
If you’re young, say south of 40, stop now; you’ll think these the irrelevant musings of an old man (middle aged nowadays, but whose counting). If you’re in your 40s you’re starting to relate to what I’ll have to say (whatever I end up saying), and if you’re in your 50s and beyond, fuggedaboutit. We’ll be winking at each other the whole time. I am almost always tripping out (yes, I’m a child of the 60s and 70s) on this vicious predator called time, and on a recent trip the image of the before personal computers video game Pac Man came to mind. I used to love that stupid little game. In one of my first jobs out of college in the early 80s every lunch I’d head up to the lunch room and battle that exhaustless Pac Man eater, not realizing it was such a good metaphor.
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