1984 ain’t got nothin’ on 2020! And now, apparently, 2021. While this is a blog committed to Christian apologetics, the defense of the truth claims of Christianity, it is also committed to the defense of Truth. Since we live in deeply secular, postmodern times, Truth as objective facts regarding the nature of things has become a casualty of the times. As a Christian parent who has sought to persuade my children that Christianity is true, I’ve also sought to persuade them that the truths of Christianity apply to all of life, including politics, culture, economics, everything. So I’ve brought them up in a proudly American home, and taught them that America is a providentially exceptional nation that has brought more liberty and prosperity to more people than any nation in the history of the world. While flawed, because all systems filled with fallen human beings are flawed, America is something worth standing for, and fighting for. As Benjamin Franklin was supposed to have said coming out of the constitutional convention, we have a republic, if we can keep it. (more…)
Living in a culture that is so obnoxiously secular, it’s easy to fall into a trap that somehow the life we now live is eternal life, that we have forever, that this life is the life that matters. I know that sounds silly. You may respond that of course everyone knows they’re going to die. Maybe. For most of us, though, as Freud argued, our own deaths are inconceivable to us. We can’t fathom that we’re actually going to ever die. I imagine we’ll refuse to believe it until the bitter end, but the end will come no matter how hard we deny it. Yet, deny it we do. So being reminded that we will not in fact live forever, that the Grim Reaper will come for us too, is an important aspect of living the Christian life. Again you may say, we shouldn’t have to be reminded of the obvious, but we sinners are a stubborn lot, and lying to ourselves is our default nature. So what has history to do with this? (more…)
Christians have been on the defensive ever since a certain itinerant preacher from Nazareth, having been crucified by Rome, was proclaimed by his followers to have come back from the dead. Even some of his followers weren’t quite sure though they were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus! A man, a Jew no less, said to be God, who died on a Roman cross for our sin, and coming back to life, was a very tough sell in the ancient world. We think it’s tough now, but we have no idea because we live in the residue of a world that’s been transformed by those events. The Apostle Paul said preaching a crucified Messiah was, “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” It was ridiculous and absurd, but even more, it was offensive, and disturbing that anyone would even make such a claim. So doubt about the Christian claims is baked into the cake of the very foundation of our faith. Yet doubt regarding these claims is often treated as if it must be avoided, or if it means something is wrong with a Christian who would doubt them. Personally, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have some doubt about whatever it is they believe. (more…)
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…)
You may have heard the term Scientism, which is treating science as something it was never intended to be, the only source of knowledge and insight into the true nature of reality. Actually science is much more humble than that; it knows it’s place, what it can and can’t do, should and should not do. Ever since the so-called Enlightenment, as Western intellectuals were turning away from religion, science slowly came to replace religion as man’s most reliable authority about the nature of reality. I came across a video from 2012 put out by the Discovery Institute called, “The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism.” It was being promoted at their website, Evolution News, with a title that instantly drew me in: “C. S. Lewis Foresaw Scientism’s Totalitarian Potential.” It is, of course, no coincidence that they are promoting the warnings of Lewis about the dangers of scientism at this point in time.
Watch the short documentary, and it will become quickly apparent how prophetic Lewis was about scientism in the age of COVID-19:
I feel like I’ve entered an episode of The Twilight Zone, although I’m convinced Rod Serling couldn’t have imagined the absurdities of COVID-19 2020 America. Since this is a blog dedicated to the defense of the Christian faith, I try to stay away from politics, but you can’t escape politics now without it, literally, hitting you in the face. I thought in Florida we may have escaped relatively unscathed, and by that I don’t mean cases or deaths for an over-hyped virus, but without our lives being turned completely upside down. Now, unfortunately, because of an “order requiring face coverings,” aka masks, by our county board of commissioners, everywhere I go it’s masks, masks, masks! Of course I refuse to wear a mask because, well, it’s absurd for healthy people to be required to wear a mask! On Thursday I entered The Zone. I went into a local RaceTrac, and three employees pointed at me and hissed, “You have to wear a mask!” No I don’t, I said right back. For this I was summarily refused service, even as I pointed out that there is a very clear exception in the so called “order” (item 10). Kafka himself would have been proud. (more…)
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