Mar 31, 2018 | Apologetics
The whole of Christianity and it’s validity rests on one simple historical event that we celebrate this Easter weekend, that Jesus of Nazareth was killed and came back to life.
As I immersed myself back into apologetics over that last eight or so years, I’ve learned that the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most well attested historical fact of the ancient world. There is more solid evidence for this having actually happened than that Cesar existed and was murdered by the Roman Senate, or that Alexander the Great conquered the known world of the time, or that Plato and Aristotle were real ancient Greek philosophers. Unless a person is a complete historical skeptic, the honest seeker will take this evidence seriously.
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Mar 28, 2018 | Theology
In my last post I began to look at an Old Testament take on sin, and it’s not a pretty picture. Until we understand the gravity of sin, and its horrific consequences in human existence, we’ll have a hard time understanding and accepting that God could be angry about it, and that wrath is an understandable response of a holy God. We can’t know this through human speculation, although we all know the anger against horrible injustice when we see or experience it. Multiply that anger by infinity because God is omniscient, and he knows the ultimate injustice of every act of rebellion against him, in thought, word, or deed. Where human speculation ends, we must depend on God’s revelation to us in Scripture to educate us about sin, and his attitude toward it.
This gravity struck me, powerfully, when reading through Exodus several years ago, and an event recounted in chapter 4. There are no accidental words in the Bible, no fluff; everything is there for a reason. The story is about Moses, and the Lord has commanded him to go back to Egypt to confront Pharaoh. This is a big deal, the beginning of the Exodus of God’s people from 400 years(!) of slavery, and a powerful metaphor God used over and over throughout redemptive history to point his people to his power to deliver them from the slavery of sin. Then we read these bizarre words:
24 At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. 26 So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.)
Seriously? The Lord is going to kill Moses? And he was fully ready to do it? The same Moses he just commissioned to go to Egypt to set his people free? It sure looks like it.
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Mar 25, 2018 | Theology
In my previous post I explained how many of us miss what it means that we are forgiven of our sins because we only see it as being forgiven, and that’s it. As I said, since immersing myself in the Old Testament for several years, I realized that in the gospel God was literally saving us from himself. That’s why the gospel is such good news, such very good news. We rightly deserved his wrath and anger against our sin, the just wages of which is death. God could never have forgiven us simply because he wanted to without his justice being satisfied. That’s the way it is with any law that is broken, or any offense given; recompense must in some way be made. We live in a moral universe where right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice exist. Why would this moral dynamic not apply to the Creator of this universe.
One of the first things you’ll notice as you start reading the Old Testament is the serious nature of this thing called sin. Not even three chapters in and the whole thing goes to hell! Don’t eat of one tree, God tells Adam. All the rest, the whole of creation is yours to enjoy. But the devil tempts Eve (where was Adam?), she and Adam eat, and the rest is fallen history.
God tells Adam that the sentence for disobedience is death (“when you eat from it you will certainly die”), but when they ate they didn’t physically die right away. We get some sense of what kind of death this is from Adam and Eve’s response to “the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day”: they hid. This is what sinners by nature do; they want nothing to do with their judge, jury, and executioner. They, we, know, every one of us, that we are guilty. As I often say, we can’t even live up to our own standards, let alone those of a perfectly holy God. (more…)
Mar 17, 2018 | Theology
Every Christian knows that being forgiven from our sins is Christianity 101. But if you ask most Christians what it means to be forgiven from our sins, I would wager that very few could answer with any confidence. I think a common answer would be something like a tautology: well, being forgiven from our sins means we’re forgiven from our sins. This was kind of how I felt having attended a church for many years where a corporate confession was done weekly, and it was always announced after that our sins were forgiven. I always appreciated that this was included in every service because I don’t think it’s done in a lot of Evangelical churches, but I always wondered why it was never explained that there was more to the point than just forgiveness.
I didn’t realized just how much was missing until I heard Dr. Kim Riddlebarger, Pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim, CA, say on a White Horse Inn broadcast something I thought I already knew. Having a masters degree from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, I surely should have known it, and did, but for some reason it wasn’t at the forefront of my understanding of my relationship with God. Keep in mind that the key word in the phrase is almost invisible in most Evangelical circles. It is implied because of the centrality of the cross to our religion, but it is rarely spelled out. Dr. Riddlebarger simply said, and in passing:
God’s wrath is fully satisfied in Christ.
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Mar 10, 2018 | Culture
You can tell from the title of this post, that I won’t be running for political office anytime soon. What’s wrong with public schools? Why would I think they should be abolished? Many would call me crazy, but my argument is based on the first amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . .” The public schools have an established religion, the religion of secularism/agnosticism, and thus they are unconstitutional. On second thought, maybe I will run for office. That would be a great campaign slogan! But I’m deadly serious. The whole idea of public schools (i.e., government schools) in a pluralistic society is problematic. Why?
In a pluralistic society God must be bracketed as persona-non-grata (to keep the government appearance of neutrality to all the different religions and worldviews), so the schools are promoting a worldview that is hostile to Christianity, or any other religion for that matter. And the idea that government schools can be “neutral” to all religions and worldview is so obviously false it’s a wonder anyone has ever believed it. But believe it they have, and most still do. It’s not that the idea of a “secular” space in society that allows for people of all religions to get along by putting their religion on the shelf is a bad thing in itself. In fact, in most of our interactions with our fellow citizens it’s a very good thing. But the presumption that we could apply it to the education of our children is naive, dangerously so.
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