Mar 7, 2021 | Epistemology - Trust
I wrote several posts in response to some of my critics, for lack of a better term, and ended the third one with a reference to a co-worker of mine who said she was a strong Christian some years ago, then abandoned her faith because of things she found online by Bart Ehrman and other skeptics. Given what I was writing about, her timing was perfect because most Christians, and everyone else, buys into the secular notion, or uses the language to affirm it, that there are such a people as believers and non-believers. She said something that perfectly encapsulates this fiction: “Wow Mike, I had no idea that you were such a fervent believer.” The implication is, of course, that she is a “non” believer. It’s unfortunate that most Christians would never question her assertion. They should because her implication is not true, that there are such people as believers and not believers. Everyone is a “believer” whether they are religious or not. (more…)
Oct 28, 2020 | Epistemology - Trust, Theology
As I’ve been writing my way through the Bible, I’ve recently been engaging with Paul’s letters, and his focus on knowledge in the life of the Christian has stood out to me. Since the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s, for much of Christianity knowledge has taken a back seat to feelings, emotions, and the human will. In typically American fashion, the focus of much Christian teaching has been on the Christian’s personal choice, both in terms of salvation, and growth in the Christian life. Too many Christians are taught, or pick up from teaching, that what we do or don’t do, can or can’t do, should or shouldn’t do, is what drives the Christian life, instead of what God has done for us in Christ. Big, huge, amazing difference! The former is self-focused, the latter God-focused, and that makes all the difference. Here are some verses that tell us what the Apostle Paul thinks of knowledge, which is fundamentally outside of us: (more…)
Sep 20, 2020 | Epistemology - Trust, Truth
We live in very strange times, something I’m reminded of every time I go to the store and for some strange reason everyone is wearing masks, except me! I wonder if I’ve entered the Twilight Zone, but my family assures me this is very much reality. So more than ever I’m in need of recalibration. I came across this phrase, “recalibrate your reality,” while listening to an episode of White Horse Inn some time ago, and it stuck with me. To calibrate usually refers to some device that does measurements, and setting it up so it can measure accurately. Put an “re” before it, and it is now being fine tuned to measure more effectively. The gentleman being interviewed on the podcast said we spend most of the week living in what we think is THE reality, and the God stuff is part of THAT. But that has it exactly backward. The Sunday reality is THE reality, and the rest of our week is part of that. Our tendency is to fit God into our story, when what we should be doing is fitting our story into God’s. Big, huge, gargantuan difference! (more…)
Jul 8, 2020 | Epistemology - Trust
If you read the title of this post and immediately thought I was talking about religious faith, I got ya! I don’t mean to be rude, but you’ve been programmed by our secular culture to think of “faith” purely as a religious phenomena that applies only to religious people. In fact, faith, a synonym for trust, is an inescapable reality of every day existence for finite human beings. You can’t live without it. I will shortly prove that, but why this is so important is because the enemies of religious faith, specifically Christian religious faith, distort the meaning of faith to demean our faith. This is not double talk. Many Christians have allowed this distortion to create unnecessary doubt about their faith. As I’ll argue, doubt is as necessary to a normal functioning human being as faith, two sides of the same coin. Which brings me to the virus. (more…)
Jun 2, 2020 | Epistemology - Trust, Theology
In my previous post I related how a sermon by our pastor on Psalm 115 inspired me to write about God verses idols. There is something else about this Psalm that after more than four decades as a follower of Christ has proved to be the very essence of my faith, and it is found in these three verses in the middle of the Psalm:
9 All you Israelites, trust in the Lord—
he is their help and shield.
10 House of Aaron, trust in the Lord—
he is their help and shield.
11 You who fear him, trust in the Lord—
he is their help and shield.
A perfectly biblical three times, trust in the Lord! The context, God verses idols, and the claims of the nations (v.2) that God is MIA, is what makes these exhortations so powerful. If we don’t trust in the Lord, what or who do we trust? The older I get, and the more I learn, the more significant I realize how important it is to always consider the alternative. I call this in a phrase, the consideration of the alternative. As I argued previously, there is no Switzerland, no metaphysical or spiritual neutrality. We have to believe, or trust (the biblical Greek word translated faith), in something or someone. People don’t give up belief or trust without religion, they just place it somewhere else. (more…)
May 16, 2020 | Epistemology - Trust
Most Christians, not to mention non-Christians, have no idea how epistemology, the study of our knowing, affects our faith. Even to say, “affects our faith” has some people automatically think, what does knowing have to do with faith! Lots. This consequence of the so-called Enlightenment, almost 400 years after it entered Western intellectual tradition, is ubiquitous, invisible, and pernicious. It is, and always has been, at war with Christianity, and it is imperative for Christians to understand this. You don’t have to be an “intellectual” either; just grasping the inescapable power of assumptions is all you need. That is, whatever is assumed to be true is accepted as true without question, things taken for granted instead of articulated. I’ll explain one of the most harmful in a moment, but I was struck just how harmful when I heard the story of two famous online guys I’d never heard of who had something now called, I gather, a deconstruction of their faith. Well, I’m going to deconstruct their deconstruction. (more…)
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