Jun 26, 2019 | Apologetics, Explanatory Power
Being a person of extreme apologetic bent, I’m always looking to validate Christian truth claims. Apologetics is critical in a Western culture drenched in secularism, where most people fit into one of the Triple A categories: Atheist, Agnostic, or Apathetic. For them this life is all that matters, even as short as it is, and they have no curiosity to see if there is any meaning beyond sheer material existence. As Christians we must be endlessly curious, asking the big questions all the time. So I have one to share with those who are more like me: In the history of the world where did the idea of a personal, Creator God come from? This is no trivial question. (more…)
Jun 22, 2019 | Notable Quotations
[T]his dichotomy that is now readily accepted between matters of private faith and public life belies a betrayal of the very identity Jesus sets forth for his followers. The hope within the Christian is not something we are able to keep private—for if the very public act of Christ’s resurrection from the dead was not real, then the very faith our culture would have us keep in private is futile. The events of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and the faith that upholds them, do not allow for the dichotomies of public and private, spiritual and physical, sacred and secular. The call of Christ is one that encompasses every possible realm, thus making “private faith” an unintelligible distinction.
—Jill Carattini, “Practical Atheism”
Jun 22, 2019 | Theology
All Evangelical Christians know what the gospel is, right? It’s the good news (in Greek) that Jesus died for our sins. Unfortunately, most Christians see the gospel as the means of becoming a Christian, and then it’s on to other things, like learning how to become a better Christian. The problem with this mindset is not only that it’s untrue, but that it turns Christianity into moralism, more law than gospel. The former is the means by which sinners think they can gain approval and acceptance before God, and at the same time proves we can’t. Law shows us the need for gospel! But unfortunately we too often confuse the two, and turn law into gospel, and gospel into law. That’s like confusing the Titanic with a rowboat!
(more…)
Jun 19, 2019 | Theology
One of the most important things we can teach our children is that people will always let us down. I’ve tried all their lives to teach mine to have realistic expectations about human nature, others and their own. This way when people inevitably do let us down, we are less likely to react in anger or self-pity or revenge, in other words negatively. One of my favorite responses to stories of annoying people in the lives of our kids is a question: Why has God put that person in your life? To learn how to love them! That itself is an annoying truth because it implies that people are not in my life primarily to make me happy, or to make my life easy. No, like everything else in our Christian lives, God uses people for our growth and his glory, and often for their good as well.
(more…)
Jun 15, 2019 | Parents and Family
When God created the universe and put this little ball in space in the metaphorical middle of it, he created these things, us, we call human beings. After he created man, “male and female he created them,” we read:
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth.”
God commands things for a reason. Skeptics are fond of asserting that God’s command’s, if they believe in him or not, are arbitrary. He commands them just because, that’s it. But a few minutes of thinking will reveal how ludicrous is such an assertion. Would not the creator of something know what is best for his creation? Of course he would! God made reality a certain way, to work a certain way. It’s not rocket science, but sinful human beings always seem to think they know better, and thus multiply their misery. (more…)
Recent Comments