Jan 29, 2021 | Explanatory Power
Ideas for blog posts often seem to come when I start praying in the morning. As has been my habit for almost seven years, every morning I wrestle my way through a text of Scripture and write my thoughts in my uncreatively named Walk Through the Bible blog. Contemplating the word of the living God, the Creator of all things, can’t help but inspire, so thoughts bubble up as I pray. Then I stop, say to myself, I have to write that down! Such is the subject of this post. I’ll explain why that may have happened with this specific thought at this specific time, but it goes back to a quote from C.S. Lewis I put on the cover of my book, and one of the most powerful apologetic (defense of the truth claims of Christianity) sentences I’ve ever encountered. It’s no surprise it came from the pen and mind of Lewis:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
(more…)
Jan 23, 2021 | Truth
1984 ain’t got nothin’ on 2020! And now, apparently, 2021. While this is a blog committed to Christian apologetics, the defense of the truth claims of Christianity, it is also committed to the defense of Truth. Since we live in deeply secular, postmodern times, Truth as objective facts regarding the nature of things has become a casualty of the times. As a Christian parent who has sought to persuade my children that Christianity is true, I’ve also sought to persuade them that the truths of Christianity apply to all of life, including politics, culture, economics, everything. So I’ve brought them up in a proudly American home, and taught them that America is a providentially exceptional nation that has brought more liberty and prosperity to more people than any nation in the history of the world. While flawed, because all systems filled with fallen human beings are flawed, America is something worth standing for, and fighting for. As Benjamin Franklin was supposed to have said coming out of the constitutional convention, we have a republic, if we can keep it. (more…)
Jan 17, 2021 | Apologetics
I made one of the big mistakes of my life back when I was a young Christian some four decades ago. I asked God to give me patience . . . . and I’ve been waiting ever since! Writing a book, and finally getting a version up I’m not embarrassed by, has been a long, long wait, especially when I was thinking that I’d be doing what I’m doing right now three and a half years ago. As I’ve learned over the years, God’s timing is never our timing. Just read the Bible and that will become readily apparent not too many pages in. I’m pretty stubborn, though (ask my family), and I was determined that sooner or later I would get the book published, and it was definitely later. As the title indicates, the third publishing option finally worked: Me!
A funny thing happened after all this time on the way to publishing fame, I no longer really cared. I just kept trying to knock down walls as they appeared in front of me, and after a bloody nose or two, I would find a way through, over, or around, and made progress. It also seems in spite of myself, and by God’s grace, through the process I found I’ve actually matured a bit in my Christian life. I’m still fundamentally rotten (increasingly) old sinful me, but I find it’s much easier after four-plus decades to “let go and let God.” I do hate that phrase, but it does capture something of the trust I have in him that comes easier than when I was a younger man and lived as if I was the master of my fate, and the captain of my soul. When I was young and naive and full of myself (I’m only half full now), I believed I could change the world. It didn’t take all that long for God to disabuse me of that notion, and it was rarely a pleasant experience. But God crushes those whom he loves so that they will put their hope and trust in him alone.
I have found over time that I can be a pretty persuasive fellow to those who are persuadable, and it seems I’m not too bad at it. You’d have to ask my children who have been the object of my persistent persuasion (often annoyingly so) over the years, but I think they would agree. So writing this book, and finally getting it published, has been a wonderful experience, even if it took way longer than I thought it would. If others are blessed by it, and the confidence in the faith of my brothers and sisters in Christ, parents or not, grows because of it, all the better. Now on to the next part of the journey, which is trying to promote it. I don’t know if anyone will be interested, but you don’t know until you ask. Actually, somebody already was, and I got my first interview. I’ll put that in another post soon, but there is nothing I love doing more than talking about Jesus!
Jan 1, 2021 | Explanatory Power
I’m such a Debbie Downer! I can’t help it. After I became a Christian when I was 18, I haven’t been able to attend or see a New Year’s celebration with out being struck by how ridiculous it all is. Do not these people, I always think, realize that they are celebrating being one year closer to their death? Is that not the ultimate buzz kill? Of course it is! So, let’s just stuff the thought down whenever it might bubble up a bit, and PARTY! Yet we cannot escape the uncomfortable fact of our mortality, no matter how hard we try, and people try very hard. What a bummer this death thing is—puts such a crimp in our plans. In our health obsessed, airbrushed culture, thinking about death too much is an indication of some kind of psychosis, and talking about it too much is impolite, not to mention awkward. Blaise Pascal understood this modern condition some 350 years ago:
In spite of all these miseries man wants to be happy, and only to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy. But how can he go about this? It would be best if he could make himself immortal, but since he cannot do this, he has decided to stop thinking about it. Being unable to cure death, misery, and ignorance, men have decided that in order to be happy, they must repress thinking about such things.
(more…)
Recent Comments