Fear and Trembling

 I just read an interesting article: “Why you can't debate unbelievers into the Kingdom of God,” By Michael Wicker . It’s a great example of the current ideas of the Evangelical Christian Church regarding the place of apologetics and argument.  Three points of contention below. First, everything positive it says could be said equally about sharing the gospel as it is said about apologetics or winning arguments. For example, our sharing of the gospel message does not change hearts; only the Holy Spirit does. The Spirit uses the biblical content of our massage about what Christ has done for us, but that message does not change anyone's heart unless the Spirit brings conviction. This is important because apologetics and argument are used by the Spirit to change hearts as well. For example, Josh McDowell, J. Warner Wallace, and Lee Strobel all share the importance of apologetics and arguments to their conversion. Second, arguments for God's existence, the resurrection of Christ...

 He tried to warn us.  We didn’t listen.    This speech was given at a commencement exercise at a prestigious liberal university in the USA.  Please take the time to listen to it in its entirety.  A printed version of the text can be found here . “…Today’s Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds…It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations…[Irreligious Humanism] has made man the measure of all things on earth—imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in politics and social...

 A recent comment from a friend on Facebook: “…a God who metes out infinite punishment for finite sins is an immoral God…” My response: Only if you assume that sin against that God is not an infinite offense.   As discussed at length above, God is infinitely pure and absolutely sovereign.   Our law bases the punishment for crimes in part on the relative innocence of the victim and on the degree of authority that was rebelled against.   That idea notwithstanding, there are many arguments and there is much evidence that God exists and that He has given us the Bible.   What God says goes.   Sin has been called by certain Christian theologians “cosmic treason,” and that is a good name for it.   Just one sin against an Infinite Being like God is in a real sense infinite in magnitude. An analogous mathematical idea is that one multiplied by infinity is infinity. A solid argument from the Bible can be found in an older book by John H. Gerstner called Repe...

 An argument from a Facebook friend I am hearing on social media these days: “…I don't believe that I can dictate what a woman does with her body against her will. I've said before, if you are truly against abortion, why not give reversable vasectomies to all male children? That would solve the issue instantly and in all forms. But it seems so barbaric to take such forceful action to a person's body against their will, even if it for the greater good…” Some background on the argument can be found at this Newsweek Article . My response: Laws forcing men to have vasectomies try to stop humans from being created.  Laws preventing people from having abortions try to stop human beings from getting killed. Perhaps this analogy will help.  If Fred kills Steve, we hold Fred accountable for his crime.  We do not say that we should have given Steve’s Dad a vasectomy to prevent Steve from being born because then the murder could not occur.  Abortion is murder.

This is an encouraging report from the Barna Group regarding the rising rate of church attendance for young people. I am glad to see church attendance rising statistically since attendance at church has many benefits for both society and the individual, not the least of which is the opportunity for a person to hear the good news of what Jesus Christ has done for us and trust Him with their lives and their eternal futures. Many research reports critical of Christianity's impact on society determine if a person is a Christian or not based on whether they claim to be a Christian in response to a single question, independent of their religious practice. Many of the conclusions reached in those studies reverse or disappear when adjusted for church attendance. The most famous example is the 50% of marriages end in divorce statistic often quoted from pulpits. Research cited by Shaunti Feldhahn is several of her books shows that those who attend religious services only have about a 35% di...

 Pardon the long quote and post, but I received an email today from Preston Sprinkle containing the following quote. Please read to the end for my comments.  The Republican party is hosting their national convention this week. I haven’t followed it too closely (for the same reason why I don’t watch golf on Saturday afternoon), but I’ve noticed that there have been some interesting people to take the stage—people you wouldn’t often expect from Republicans. For instance, model, former stripper, and OnlyFans (porn?) star Amber Rose gave a speech offering her support of Donald Trump at the convention. The conference also featured lawyer Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, who recited the ardas (a Sikh prayer), where she prayer to the god Waheguru, calling him "our one true God" and went on to pray "thank you for creating America as a unique heaven on this Earth, where all people are free to worship according to their faith." I was so thrilled to hear this coming from the GOP! Beyond ...