School Shootings: The Triumph of Secularism

School Shootings: The Triumph of Secularism

It has happened again, this time at a Christian grade school in Nashville. When I first heard about it, and it was reported a female was the shooter, that didn’t compute. Women are never mass shooters. Then I learned this:  Three adults and three children were killed...
Revelation, Our Awesome God, and the Desperate Faith of Secularism

Revelation, Our Awesome God, and the Desperate Faith of Secularism

At my other blog I’ve been writing through the Bible the last seven plus years, from Genesis to Revelation (that might sound familiar to you hard core Genesis fans), and have made it to Revelation 4. I thought I’d share here a version of a post I did there about my initial encounter with that chapter because the way I approached it had apologetic implications. Before I got to Revelation I knew it is way beyond my ability to interpret the strange language and bizarre images we find there. So as I make my way through I decided to read a couple books to help me out, with whatever resources I can find online. One of those books is called Triumph of the Lamb by Dennis E. Johnson. What stood out in what he says seems to me the point of Revelation. It is not that we are to understand everything, not to try to make sense of every detail. That isn’t possible for us, and wasn’t even possible for the ancient Jews who were steeped in apocalyptic literature. The objective, I believe, of God’s revelation to us in Revelation is to induce in us an awe in one so inconceivably great as our Creator God, who is also the sovereign ruler over all reality, spiritual and material. The other which flows from this, is to trust in him beyond our seeing and perceiving and understanding. I’ve quoted Isaiah (26:3) many times in this regard, “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.” Perfect peace is of course impossible in this life in a fallen world, in a fallen body, lived among fallen people, but we can all get closer to perfect. The Book of Revelation will help us do that. (more…)
Classical Education: Opportunity to Challenge The Religion of Secularism

Classical Education: Opportunity to Challenge The Religion of Secularism

We were all taught growing up that there is this thing called the separation of church and state. The phrase goes back to a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists (CT) in 1802 where he mentions a wall between the two. This metaphor of Jefferson was transformed by a Supreme Court case in 1947, Everson v. Board of Education, into a partition not between church and state, but between religion and public life that made the Berlin Wall look like rice paper. Ever since, American secular cultural elites have pushed Christianity ever deeper into the crevices of personal experience, so that any expression of specifically Christian faith is deemed, in an appropriate German word, verboten.

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