Jun 22, 2019 | Theology
All Evangelical Christians know what the gospel is, right? It’s the good news (in Greek) that Jesus died for our sins. Unfortunately, most Christians see the gospel as the means of becoming a Christian, and then it’s on to other things, like learning how to become a better Christian. The problem with this mindset is not only that it’s untrue, but that it turns Christianity into moralism, more law than gospel. The former is the means by which sinners think they can gain approval and acceptance before God, and at the same time proves we can’t. Law shows us the need for gospel! But unfortunately we too often confuse the two, and turn law into gospel, and gospel into law. That’s like confusing the Titanic with a rowboat!
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Jun 19, 2019 | Theology
One of the most important things we can teach our children is that people will always let us down. I’ve tried all their lives to teach mine to have realistic expectations about human nature, others and their own. This way when people inevitably do let us down, we are less likely to react in anger or self-pity or revenge, in other words negatively. One of my favorite responses to stories of annoying people in the lives of our kids is a question: Why has God put that person in your life? To learn how to love them! That itself is an annoying truth because it implies that people are not in my life primarily to make me happy, or to make my life easy. No, like everything else in our Christian lives, God uses people for our growth and his glory, and often for their good as well.
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Jun 15, 2019 | Parents and Family
When God created the universe and put this little ball in space in the metaphorical middle of it, he created these things, us, we call human beings. After he created man, “male and female he created them,” we read:
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth.”
God commands things for a reason. Skeptics are fond of asserting that God’s command’s, if they believe in him or not, are arbitrary. He commands them just because, that’s it. But a few minutes of thinking will reveal how ludicrous is such an assertion. Would not the creator of something know what is best for his creation? Of course he would! God made reality a certain way, to work a certain way. It’s not rocket science, but sinful human beings always seem to think they know better, and thus multiply their misery. (more…)
Jun 9, 2019 | Notable Quotations
Subjectivism not only produces error and distortion, but it breeds arrogance as well. To believe what I believe simply because I believe it or to argue that my opinion is true simply because it is my opinion is the epitome of arrogance. If my views cannot stand the test of objective analysis and verification, humility demands that I abandon them. But the subjectivist has the arrogance to maintain his position with no objective support or corroboration. To say to someone, “If you like to believe what you want to believe, that’s fine; I’ll believe what I want to believe,” only sounds humble on the surface.
—R. C. Sproul, Knowing Scripture
Jun 8, 2019 | Plausibility
If God is real, and he most certainly is, why does he not seem real to so many people? The answer is simple: The heights of Western culture are dominated by secularists who think God is a curiosity from a benighted past out of which science and the rational Enlightenment have rescued us. They dominate education, entertainment, and media of all kinds, those instruments of influence in the culture that have a significant effect on how we view and interpret reality. For them, God seems no more real than Santa Clause. A sociological term that captures this phenomenon is plausibility structure, or those influences in the culture that make certain things seem real (plausible) to us, or not. Unless someone has a strong competing plausibility structure, like their home and church, God likely will not have much relevance to their lives. Most people like it that way, but they are not why I write this post.
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