Apr 28, 2019 | Epistemology - Trust
I recently heard New Testament scholar Daniel B. Wallace on a podcast say that we need to understand the difference between the search for truth and the search for certainty. Most Americans, and westerners in general, think that because you can’t have the latter, the former is impossible as well. That’s one side of the divide where the agnostics and skeptics congregate, and for whom any debate about ultimate meaning is a fruitless waste of time. On the other are those who believe absolute certainty is achievable, and act like they’ve found it. Arrogant, absolutist atheists are the most obvious offenders of this mindset, but Christians aren’t immune from it either. There are certain kinds of fundamentalist Christians (Protestant or Catholic) who think absolute certainty is a requirement for and evidence of genuine Christian faith. You’ll see shortly what this is tragically mistaken.
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Apr 20, 2019 | Truth
Since it is Easter weekend I thought I might bring up an uncomfortable question for those who are not followers of Jesus Christ: what if it is true after all? I’ve been struck reading and writing my way through the gospels, and now in John, that Jesus confronts people with unequivocally exclusive claims. There is zero beating around the bush with Jesus. When you carefully examine the claims he makes, they are stark, and mutually exclusive. With Jesus it’s pretty much either/or, my way or the highway. Yet every religion, even those who espouse no religion at all, wants a piece of Jesus. You will notice that those who do this, Muslims, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, secularists, all pick and choose what Jesus says or does to server their own ends. None of them takes the texts of the gospels in their entirety because if they did, that Jesus would blow their cover! Why does what Jesus says or does have historical authenticity or authority when it fits their purposes, and not when it doesn’t? Good rhetorical question!
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Apr 13, 2019 | Explanatory Power
On April 8, 2010 prior to heading to bed I went to check e-mail. It was around 11:00 p.m., and I saw a message from my uncle that I had trouble processing: my cousin, Anthony, whom I affectionately called Ants, had died in a motorcycle accident that day, all of 45 years of age. That’s not possible, is it? How could Ants be gone, just like that, forever? I cried. And beat myself up because I’d meant to call him for several months, but hadn’t. Now, I would never ever be able to talk to him again, on this earth, although I know by our very well established faith I shall talk to Anthony again.
Every year on the anniversary of Anthony’s death I text or call my cousin Greg, his brother, to remember Anthony and affirm the value he had in our lives. It’s still hard to believe he’s gone. When I said to Greg how fast the nine years has gone since Anthony left us, he replied, “If this is all there is, why bother?” Exactly! The swift passage of time is of course a cliche, but primarily among those of us who’ve lived four decades or more. For those younger, the words “swift passage” are an abstraction with little or no meaning. For me, it wasn’t until I got north of 40 that this time thing started to get out of hand. I came up with an analogy to convey the creeping, unsettling experience of time’s acceleration.
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Apr 6, 2019 | Apologetics
I’ve been slowly reading through Frederick Copleston’s A History of Philosophy, and having recently finished the section on the great Scottish skeptic David Hume, I got to wondering if Hume might come to the same conclusions today. An impossible question to answer, no doubt, like comparing great athletes from different eras, but one worth contemplating. The entire Enlightenment project was birthed in an historical and cultural epoch when a world and universe without God had a certain plausibility to it. Science was a new, exciting phenomenon, and Christian apologetics as a discipline hardly existed. The enterprise to construct a credible explanation of reality based on experience (empiricism) and reason sans God was in its infancy, and a heady enterprise it was. Philosophers, even those who considered themselves Christians, thought they could explain reality without revelation. That hasn’t turned out so well.
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Apr 1, 2019 | Culture
Probably not, but it should be. If you’re not familiar with the novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriett Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), it was published in 1852 to communicate to the American people the evils of slavery. Many people who were not involved in slavery, especially in the north, often had no idea how brutally slaves were treated by their masters. One overview of the book says:
Stowe’s vivid characters and portrayal of their struggles opened reader’s eyes to the realities of slavery and the humanity of enslaved people. Stowe hoped the novel would build empathy for the characters and, in turn, for enslaved individuals.
After seeing Unplanned, there is no doubt that anyone with an open mind and a shred of humanity would be cut to the quick over the realities of abortion, and the humanity of the babies who lives are unceremoniously, coldly, snuffed out.
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