Nov 27, 2020 | Gratitude
Maybe it’s because I’m officially old and cry at Hallmark cards, but it seems over the last number of years that God’s truth is able to elicit in me tears that I don’t remember in the younger me. I’m sure this has nothing to do with age per se, but with a growing realization that comes with growing in the knowledge of his benefits. These words of John Calvin in the first chapter of his Institutes captures well the nature of this divine-human relationship:
I call “piety” that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces. For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that his is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond him—they will never yield him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.
Bingo! There are many profound truths here that would take many posts to unpack, but here is the gist: God is for us, not against us. (more…)
Nov 22, 2020 | Gratitude
I was listening/watching the Steve Deace show a couple weeks back, and the host, a Christian, said he needs to repent for not being thankful enough. Bingo! I was instantly convicted. I wrote a chapter in my book about gratitude, and how important being thankful is, continually, in the life of a Christian. I’ve taught that to my children as they’ve grown up, but it’s so much easier said than done. Life lived in a fallen world enduring the gravitational pull of sin is hard. In one of the great understatements in all of history, Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble . . .” Ya think! But he finished his sentence with, “but take heart; I have overcome the world.” I love the world for trouble in Greek, thlipsis-θλῖψις, in a sadomasochistic kind of way: properly, pressure (what constricts or rubs together), used of a narrow place that “hems someone in”; tribulation, especially internal pressure that causes someone to feel confined (restricted, “without options”). That is life in a fallen world! (more…)
Nov 15, 2020 | Truth
Christians have been on the defensive ever since a certain itinerant preacher from Nazareth, having been crucified by Rome, was proclaimed by his followers to have come back from the dead. Even some of his followers weren’t quite sure though they were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus! A man, a Jew no less, said to be God, who died on a Roman cross for our sin, and coming back to life, was a very tough sell in the ancient world. We think it’s tough now, but we have no idea because we live in the residue of a world that’s been transformed by those events. The Apostle Paul said preaching a crucified Messiah was, “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” It was ridiculous and absurd, but even more, it was offensive, and disturbing that anyone would even make such a claim. So doubt about the Christian claims is baked into the cake of the very foundation of our faith. Yet doubt regarding these claims is often treated as if it must be avoided, or if it means something is wrong with a Christian who would doubt them. Personally, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have some doubt about whatever it is they believe. (more…)
Nov 8, 2020 | Theology
I write this, and my title, while we as a nation are in the middle of a bitterly contested election. It seems to many of us that a whole lot of chicanery is going on, or more accurately fraud and outright theft of a presidential election. We have lived through four years of a terribly dishonest and partisan media that has tried to destroy the President of the United States, with what everyone knows are lies heaped upon lies. Does what’s going on now surprise us? It is shocking in it’s brazenness, but not at all surprising. We trust that eventually the truth will win out, but that is a great challenge when an entire political party doesn’t even believe there is such a thing as truth. Form them, postmodern to the core, there is “the narrative,” and that is only what furthers their political power. If they “win” this time without transparency, without evidence that the apparent fraud is not in fact fraud, it will be very bad for this country, and people of any political party. (more…)
Nov 1, 2020 | Apologetics
Reading through Denton’s book is a mind blower. As I’m reading I keep thinking, I have to quote and write about this, then that, then this, then that, but when I got to his discussion of the human brain it was just too much. The complexity is staggering. To think that undirected “natural” random processes a la Darwinism could result in a human brain defies reason. I will quote several paragraphs, and see if you don’t agree. (more…)
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