Jun 26, 2019 | Apologetics, Explanatory Power
Being a person of extreme apologetic bent, I’m always looking to validate Christian truth claims. Apologetics is critical in a Western culture drenched in secularism, where most people fit into one of the Triple A categories: Atheist, Agnostic, or Apathetic. For them this life is all that matters, even as short as it is, and they have no curiosity to see if there is any meaning beyond sheer material existence. As Christians we must be endlessly curious, asking the big questions all the time. So I have one to share with those who are more like me: In the history of the world where did the idea of a personal, Creator God come from? This is no trivial question. (more…)
Jun 6, 2019 | Apologetics
It’s a common theme in secular Western media that Christianity is all but on its last legs, that “nones” are the future, and that religious faith is an exhausted remnant of a benighted, pre-scientific past. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even in the secular West it’s only partly true, but in the rest of the world Christianity is exploding. I’ve read and heard this in various places, but the secularists are so dominant in Western culture that the impression we’re given is that Christianity is passe. Even in the West, especially in America, that’s laughable. Unfortunately it’s easy to accept the secular narrative because we don’t know what’s actually happening on the ground. As well informed as I think I am, a talk I recently listened to by Pastor Rick Warren opened my eyes to the relentless march of God’s building and expanding of his church. When looking at much of the sorry state of our fallen world we too often forget Jesus’ promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church.
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May 6, 2019 | Apologetics
Raising children, even for my wife and I in the late stages in which we find ourselves with the youngest of our three at 17, offers a plethora (love that word) of opportunities to bring the reality of God into their lives. Christian parents in a secular culture hostile to all things Christian must understand this is a full time job. Fortunately, the opportunities are never ending because so is our God! He is, after all, the Creator of all things, and therein lies a multitude of opportunities. Having a music obsessed son offers many of those in our house.
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Apr 6, 2019 | Apologetics
I’ve been slowly reading through Frederick Copleston’s A History of Philosophy, and having recently finished the section on the great Scottish skeptic David Hume, I got to wondering if Hume might come to the same conclusions today. An impossible question to answer, no doubt, like comparing great athletes from different eras, but one worth contemplating. The entire Enlightenment project was birthed in an historical and cultural epoch when a world and universe without God had a certain plausibility to it. Science was a new, exciting phenomenon, and Christian apologetics as a discipline hardly existed. The enterprise to construct a credible explanation of reality based on experience (empiricism) and reason sans God was in its infancy, and a heady enterprise it was. Philosophers, even those who considered themselves Christians, thought they could explain reality without revelation. That hasn’t turned out so well.
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Mar 16, 2019 | Apologetics
Did you know Jesus was a Jew? That he grew up and lived his entire life among religious Jews? Did you know that this fact is critically important in establishing the credibility and plausibility of the gospel stories? If you don’t, then you may not be familiar with the phrase, psychological apologetics. This is basically how psychological evidence (how people think, what makes sense to them, their conceptual framework) establishes the facts of the gospel narratives. Once you learn about this, it’s impossible to un-see it, and the more your confidence will grow in the historical reliability of what we read in the New Testament (and the Old as well).
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Mar 10, 2019 | Apologetics
I’m listening to a wonderful series of lectures by pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim, California, Kim Riddlebarger called “Apologetics in a Post-Christian Age.” He argues, persuasively, that the central fact of the apologetics enterprise is the resurrection. If that in fact happened, then everything else follows: Christianity is the true understanding of the nature of reality. If it didn’t, eat, drink, and be merry . . . . The question for Christians, and those not yet but who understand the implications of such an event if it in fact happened: Can we trust the historical accounts and information we find in our Bibles? Most people today think whatever happened, it was 2,000 years ago, so of course we can’t know if it actually happened. These people would be wrong. How can I say that with such certainty?
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