It is one of those subjective truisms that a person becomes a good writer sometime after writing their millionth word. I don’t know if the truism is true or not. I should like to think that my writing was good many hundred thousand words ago. 🙂 I won’t deny, however, that the writing in my …
Here’s a bit of a no-brainer that was years in the making… all of the published books and short stories I’ve written, listed in one place: Here. To date, these include my Birth Pangs series, my pro-life book, and two collections of short stories. Some are available only in digital format while others are in …
I fear that this post is going to be construed as sexist. Let me assure the reader that I love women. Some of my best friends are women. In fact, I’m even married to one (and she is not a pillow). People have noted that the female characters in my Birth Pangs series are really strong, independent ladies. But I think I’m still going to be called a sexist.
I had the misfortune to see the movie Twilight this weekend with my wife. I had heard that it was a chick flick. That’s not the misfortunate part. The misfortune consisted in it being, in my estimation, a poorly made movie. Maybe the book is better. It wasn’t a surprise exactly but after the movie was over I asked my wife what she thought and she liked the movie. I asked why and she said something to the effect of the guy showing complete and utter devotion to the girl in the show.
I am proud to announce that Athanatos Christian Ministries will be hosting its first annual online apologetics conference this May.
http://onlineapologeticsconference.com/
The theme for the conference is ‘literary apologetics.’ Potentially, future conferences will tackle some other brand of communicating or defending the Gospel through the arts. ‘Literary apologetics’ is, obviously, using the written word to carry out that endeavor. Notable examples are C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Dorothy Sayers, to name a few.
The purpose of the conference is to issue a call to Christians in the arts to express their faith through them and issue a call to the Christian Church to help them in a more deliberate fashion.
The conference is taking registrations now. The cost is $35 for the two day event, but discounts are available for students and there is an early bird special in place before March 15th.
Speakers:
Not too long ago, FallenandFlawed blog interviewed me about my apologetics ministry and some of my activities. As tends to happen with me, I got a little long and only a portion of the interview could be posted. With permission, here are the remaining questions and answers:
Q. In 2009 ACM launched a Christian Writing Contest, which was an outgrowth of ACM’s desire to develop a genre of fiction called “literary apologetics.” Forgive me, but immediately books like C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce and The Chronicles of Narnia come to mind. Is that what you’re looking for? What kind of material did you receive?
I will be traveling throughout Michigan from about Oct. 15th to Oct 22nd speaking in various venues, primarily in regards to pro-life issues. See: www.wechoselife.com.
Many of these presentations are at high schools and other places that are not open to the public. However, three of the ones that are open to the public are also apologetic related, especially the St. Matthew event where I argue the reliability of the Bible and the St. Peter’s event where I discuss challenges to the Christian faith (topic title: “Five things killing Christianity.”
Below is a schedule of the ‘open to the public’ events.
In short, dear Christian, I contend that we already have in front of us all the ‘higher level organisms’ we need: the community of the family and the community of the faithful. Here and only here are individuals respected, welcomed, and free. Here only are individuals understood to be forever, and here only do we see the context in which they will be forever- in community through Christ.
It is therefore with great caution that we must approach the efforts of the Statists. True, very often they propose programs that we can in good conscience get behind. However, even then they do not share our views about the individual, and so, they can, quite unexpectedly, change things. They would only be acting on their own values, and so we should not be shocked. Thus it should be evident that the more power we give them to help us the more power we give to them to hurt us.
As such, it is worth positing that we should give them no power at all, and the power that we do give them come with very robust checks and balances. Our trust in their sincere intentions seems, increasingly, to be poised to do us all great harm- or at least, the weakest among us, and those who are the heaviest burden on society. In the name of the “Most good for the most people” great evil is being inflicted, and history tells us a great deal more is possible.
One purpose of the post is to highlight the obvious dangers, illustrated over and over again throughout history, and in the last century in particular, of having secular humanists and atheists in charge of bestowing rights. What they giveth, they can taketh. And they have often taketh.
But another purpose of this post is to point out to the many Christians calling for ‘universal health care’ that if you are claiming that God has bestowed certain rights such as health care, you’ve got to back that up somehow. Your sentimental arguments, sincere and well meaning, have as much weight to me as sentimental arguments like “God makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, don’t you want that, too?” have weight with atheists. In short, none.
Why? Does it mean that I am indifferent to those who struggle to receive adequate health care? Not at all. It does, however, have important implications as to how we proceed to address that issue
The above quote is not actually what annoyed me. Instead, it was his classification of people who keep their children instead of aborting them when they have been diagnosed with ‘devastating’ diseases (again, as defined by whom?) as being akin to one who believes in a flat earth. Here is the extended quote:
If one reads about reproductive issues in the conservative media-which I often do-one is bombarded with tales of mothers who have sacrificed personal and professional opportunities to bring fetuses to term. The implication is that while bearing a child when one is ready is a blessing, bearing a child when one is not prepared garners one extra moral credit in the cosmos. Similarly, while having a healthy baby is a cause for joy, some opponents of abortion profess that having a baby with a devastating or even fatal birth defect is proof of the mother’s fortitude and character. If one believes that human life begins at conception, this is logically the case. However, if one believes that life begins after conception-as do a wide majority of Americans, if polls on such issues as embryonic stem cell research are to believed-then the suffering caused by transforming an unwanted embryo into a living baby, who will either endure debilitating disease or will enter a deeply inhospitable home environment, is not at all a cause for pride. It more is akin to deciding that the world is flat and then boasting of not falling off the edge.
As readers of this blog know, my wife and I are examples of what he is talking about here
America is increasingly a mission field in its own right. Just as missionaries have to learn the language of the natives before they can present the Gospel effectively, so too do we need to do the same in America. This does not mean (per some trends in apologetics today) adopting the ‘language’ and methodologies wholesale. For example, some aspects of post-modernism provide legitimate insights into the nature of reality. However, much of post-modernism needs to be rejected as rubbish. Nonetheless, if we want to communicate with a Pomo person, we have to be able to speak their language, presenting truth in their context, without necessarily accepting as truth that context.
The trajectory of our course leads to a fate that would fully justify despair.
These are themes that I have been covering in my apologetics ministry. To counter the ignorance regarding Christianity my ministry launched an online apologetics academy. ‘Non-judgmental’ affectations are covered every week on this blog. As for the ‘poisonous propaganda’ my ministry’s Christian writing contest is geared specifically to spur on Christian authors so that they can help turn the tide from the midst of the very belly of the beast.
Sowell describes this trajectory, asserting with conviction that a few nuclear decimated American cities followed by a quick American surrender is along that path. Perhaps. Yet I perceive that the problem is that America has already had ‘bombs’ dropped on it and the surrender occurred long ago. The time for action was probably long ago. When Americans agreed to go with the whole ‘income tax’ thing, when they allowed the creation of the Federal Reserve, when they allowed the conditions that culminated in Roe vs Wade to persist. Today we reap the consequences of these and many other ‘bombs’ and act surprised, as though the trajectory could not be plotted and predicted.
You may have arrived here searching out this Latin phrase from my book, Fidelis, the first in my Birth Pangs series. If not, you might want to consider picking up said books! “Praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui…”Or, in some translations I’ve seen, “Faith supplies what the senses cannot…” But I am no Latin scholar. We …
Recent Comments