Aug 4, 2019 | Culture
My first response to hearing of the horrific shooting in El Paso was, where was the good guy with the gun who could have stopped this? This is the world bequeathed to us by a secular culture that has rejected God, that you can’t go shopping on a Saturday morning in America without worrying that you might be mowed down by an evil man (it is always men, isn’t it?) with a gun. Then I thought of the families devastated by the loss of their loved ones whose lives will be haunted by this event as long as they live. Imagine it happening to those you love and care about. It is infuriating. Then learning it was a 21 year-old, I thought what kind of parents could raise a child capable of such evil. Blaming parents does not make me popular with those who are convinced raising children in 21st century America is a crap shoot. So be it. But I won’t tarry on these things because life in a fallen world to put it bluntly, sucks! Or it can, as such events demonstrate.
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Aug 3, 2019 | Plausibility
Since I keep seeing articles and blog posts about the apostasy of Joshua Harris, I keep thinking of lessons we can learn from his postmodern rejection of the Christian faith. I outlined three in my last post, and add another in this one. It’s a concept that is all but invisible in Christian conversations, and even in apologetics: plausibility structures. Before you go off somewhere else in Internetland because it sounds like an esoteric concept for brainiacs, or something, stick with me. It could not be more important for Christians trying to navigate their faith commitments in a hostile, secular 21st century Western culture.
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Aug 1, 2019 | Parents and Family
A lot of Internet ink has been spilled about author/pastor, Joshua Harris, so I figured I might as well add to the torrent. And given my bent, I’ll orient it toward apologetics. Harris recently decided to jettison the ideas in a book he wrote about sexual purity and dating in the 90s, and also decided that the Christian faith he thought inspired those ideas must be jettisoned as well. The marriage of 20 years based on the book’s message, that’s over too. In his declaration of apostasy he also apologized to the “LGBTQ+ community,” which means he’s embracing the moral system of modern liberal secularism. He’ll get plenty of praise from the usual suspects for that move, but there are some lessons here, elephant in the room kind of lessons. I haven’t read the book, but I think what I’ve read based on what’s transpired in his life is accurate.
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Jul 27, 2019 | Epistemology - Trust
My wife and I watched a documentary on Netflix the other night about these three great German thinkers who have shaped the modern world in innumerable ways, most of them harmful. I couldn’t help thinking as I watched about the great divide in human existence between God revealing himself and Truth to us, and human speculation. It’s one or the other, my friends. Without seeking and accepting the former, the latter is all we have. When I was much younger a cultural phenomenon called the Rubik’s Cube was all the rage. It’s a 3-D puzzle that is very difficult to solve, but it is solvable. Reality without revelation is not, a completely unsolvable Rubik’s Cube.
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Jul 24, 2019 | Theology
Those of you who are parents know those moments Madison Avenue has coined as “priceless.” I had one the other night that thrilled my soul when my son said something to the effect, “I’m so glad that God is my salvation.” The subtitled of my book gets at why this was so thrilling for me: “God’s Provision for Building an Enduring Faith in Your Children.” It’s very easy for Christians, saved fallen sinners that we are, to think our salvation is up to us: if we just do the right things, make the right decisions, live the right way, then God will be a little more pleased with us than he otherwise would be. The focus tends inward, subjective, on us, something I’ve taught our kids all their lives is not the Christianity we embrace.
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