Aug 16, 2020 | Theology
As distressing as this over-hyped COVID-19 pandemic has been (a real threat to only a very definable fraction of 1% of the population), there have been some silver linings. One is that I’m questioning things I would have never questioned pre-COVID, and that’s a very good thing. Many of those questions are directed at modern medicine, and medical establishment, which has become for me a quintessential living example of the fall of man described in Genesis 3. Satan’s temptation to Eve was simple: God is a liar, and if you eat of the tree “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” With one bite we became beings who think we get to determine our own reality, a very God-like capability. The problem, of course, is that Satan is a liar. The bigger problem,is that people believe him, just as Eve did. (more…)
Aug 8, 2020 | Parents and Family
I’d been waiting to write a post about our youngest son going off to college, but because of a ridiculous overreaction to a certain virus he’s not going. Instead he’s taking a couple classes online from where he was supposed to go, Florida International University, and a few from the local community college, also online. For someone who’s majoring in music this whole online thing can only go so far. My principle contention still holds, though. He is now in college, will be getting the same vacuous secular drivel as he would if he were there, and his faith will indeed endure and thrive. Having written a book on building an enduring faith in our children, I’ve encountered Christians who think having such confidence is not warranted. As you can guess, I disagree. (more…)
Jul 29, 2020 | Gratitude
That SGT Peppers taught the band to play? Nah. It was 60 years ago today that I was born! I don’t mention that to bring attention to myself or my birthday, which as my family will tell you, I am loathe to do (the birthday part), but to muse on the strangeness of the passage of time. The older I get, the stranger it becomes. Time itself is a conundrum. We all know what it is, until we’re asked to explain it. For a portion of our lives we take it for granted, and don’t think much of it at all, other than to complain that certain things take waaaaaaay too long. Then something happens along the way, for me after I hit mile-marker 40. Time which never changes its actual pace, seemed to speed up. I remember attending a seminar in my 30s where the speaker said something about five years, and that for the youngsters in the audience that may seem like a long time. I remember thinking, five years is a long time. Oh, but it’s not, at all, as you oldsters know. And speaking of oldsters, isn’t it funny how everyone complains about getting old, but nobody wants to die? (more…)
Jul 24, 2020 | Explanatory Power
Living in a culture that is so suffocatingly secular, we are programmed to think that life explains itself. Whether we think of evolution or Darwinism, or not, the tendency for most people is not to see God in everything, as we should, but to see things in and of themselves, as if they got there by some “natural” process. Although it’s completely insane and illogical, people too easily accept that life just created itself. I know, it’s ridiculous. Yet our cultural elites, our supposed intellectual betters, expect us to believe that some king of random, unguided, material process can explain everything. In fact, it explains absolutely nothing! I’ve been slowly reading through a series of 81 articles at Evolution News about “The Designed Body,” and reading it makes it impossible for one to be an atheist. And when I use the word impossible, I mean impossible! I challenge anyone to read how heart valves work, and then tell me with a straight face that “random, unguided, material processes” could account for it: (more…)
Jul 18, 2020 | Explanatory Power
So far, anyway. That most important thing would be Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, but he hasn’t been able to make what to him is probably a leap. That’s a shame, for obviously possible eternal reasons, but also because his worldview is so infused with Jewish-Christian notions about the nature of man and sin, and the inherent struggle that is life. I’m slowly reading through his 12 Rules for Life with one of my sons, and this paragraph (p. 93) blew me away:
We are always and simultaneously at point “a” (which is less desirable than it could be), moving towards point “b” (which we deem better, in accordance with our explicit and implicit values). We always encounter the world in a state of insufficiency and seek its correction. We can imagine new ways that things could be set right, and improve, even if we have everything we thought we needed. Even when satisfied, temporarily, we remain curious. We live within a framework that defines the present as eternally lacking and the future as eternally better. If we did not see things this way, we would not act at all. We wouldn’t even be able to see, because to see we must focus, and to focus we must pick one thing above all else on which to focus.
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