A brief Introduction:While studying to be a pastor in college I abandoned my faith. In fact, I abandoned everything I thought I believed and rebuilt.
To my own surprise at the time, I found that Christianity was much stronger than I had thought. As I rebuilt my belief system, I realized that there needed to be people out there responding to the questions people have. I had them myself. So, while not continuing on to be a pastor, I have focused on educating people about what Christianity is all about and responding to the various charges and accusations made against it.
There are some obvious challenges to being successful in that capacity, but a big part of it consists not in arguing with atheists and skeptics, but rather in providing Christians with accurate information in the first place to prevent them from leaving the faith in the first place.
Questioning is a very normal and natural part of growing up, and I am convinced that it is not wrong to ask questions of God at any age. God doesn't strike people down. On the other hand, if people are going to reject Christianity, it is my aim to at least make sure they reject the real Christianity and not a false view of it. Also, much heartache can be avoided by educating Christians properly to begin with. My experience has helped me... but it was unnecessary.
Paul said that some plant, some water, and others reap the increase. My job is to go out into the land and move rocks- or break them if necessary- till the land, and struggle through knee deep fertilizer... all in the effort to allow those who come later to plant, water, and reap the harvest. I look forward to the prospects of either serving you as someone who needs to haul rocks out of the field, or as someone who can look at the field, detect problems, and help farmers more effectively plant, water, and reap.
Here Begins my Blog
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I was shocked today to read of the unanimous Supreme Court decision asserting that governmental institutions do not have to place an entity’s monument just because that city, state, or municipality has placed others. That this was the decision isn’t what shocked me. What shocked me was that it was unanimous. I’m glad: it restores new faith in the left side of the bench because I had trouble seeing how any sane person could think otherwise. A victory for sanity!
This is going to have some big implications. One of the secularist’s chief arguments concerns fairness. According to them, in order for there to be fairness under the constitution, either all religious monuments must be allowed or none of them. In affirming the right for cities to have monuments at all and decide which ones (if any), we are spared the nonsensical situation where we must allow a contrarian monument to go up whereever there is any other monument. Imagine, for example, that next to the Vietnam Memorial it was required to erect a memorial to Ho Chi Minh. Absurd. If it came to that I reckon that our veterans would prefer not to have any monument at all. That is the only other alternative in the name of ‘fairness’ if the secularists are right.
In my own town, a single atheist expressed his discomfort at the sight of a lit cross overlooking the town during the Easter season. (The cross is a lit star the rest of the year; this poor atheist does not, as you would expect, express similar discomfort at the government’s endorsement of astrology.) In the course of discussions about what to do the village leadership wanted to sell the property off to a private entity and thus preserve the monument. Though legal, this seemed to me- and the atheists- to be a cowardly escape. Read the rest of the entry… »
Just when you think it can’t get any more ridiculous. Just when you think that legislators can’t get any dumber or more stupid or more wicked. Just when you think that you’ve seen the worst: the government surprises you.
Pending legislation described as:
A land management bill that swept through the U.S. Senate last month and is headed for a House vote this week punishes rock collectors and paleontologists with arrest and expropriation of their cars and other equipment for even unknowingly disturbing fossils on public land, say critics.
In the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, a “forfeiture” provision would let the government confiscate “all vehicles and equipment of any person” who digs up or removes a rock or a bone from federal land that meets the bill’s broad definition of “paleontological resource,” says a report by Jon Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Now probably this will be relaxed, especially now that it has come to light. The real issue is why it was ever written in the first place. Was it because a bunch of morons sat down to write the law? Or was it rather that some people knowing exactly what they were doing sat down to write the law? Either way leaves us wondering about the things that have not come to light. No one can possibly comb through the thousands and thousands of pages of legislation making its way up the pipeline in Obama’s administration.
Even as we speak, no doubt, legislators (and their lobbyist friends) are dusting off old bills that never had a chance before and dropping them into the pipeline. Sure, a ‘drop’ here or there will get caught, but most will get through as it courses by in a torrent. When the pipeline is finally dry (if we can imagine such a thing) who knows what God awful legislation will have passed. Read the rest of the entry… »
Thomas Powell’s recent article at Townhall called “A Fatal Trajectory” was featured on Rush Limbaugh today. When I got home I found some friends talking about it, too. I thought Powell’s piece hit the nail on the proverbial head.
Here is a quote I want to comment briefly on:
Ultimately, it all comes down to who is willing to die and who is not.
How did we get to this point? It was no single thing.
The dumbing down of our education, the undermining of moral values with the fad of “non-judgmental” affectations, the denigration of our nation through poisonous propaganda from the movies to the universities. The list goes on and on.
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. Read the rest of the entry… »
In today’s economy we hear about companies cutting staff and reducing costs, ostensibly on the idea that they are improving the health of the corporation. A healthy corporation, we assume is a good thing. Now ‘corporate’ comes out of the Latin for ‘body.’ For the purpose of the law in this country, a business corporation is an entirely separate entity from the people that compose it. The bottom line is basically the only measurement of ‘health’ that matters. You can wreck the lives of 5,000 of your workers and strengthen the corporation and it is considered justifiable.
Now, Christians talk about being part of a ‘corporation’ as well. We are the body of believers. We are the body of Christ. There is something interesting about the modern day expression of this (I speak mainly of the Church in America) in that the ideas of the Church as corporate and businesses are corporate have melded in many ways, with, I’m afraid, the Church taking on the mindset of the business world.
This is evident in a number of ways. Of course there is the structural aspect. Most churches are organized with some sort of ‘board’ at the top with a number of committees beneath it to carry out the work of the congregation. There are presidents, vice presidents, treasurers, secretaries. These words carry ‘baggage’ that is unavoidable in implementation. This structure more or less models the secular business model of what it means to be ‘corporate.’ It isn’t hard to understand how this has come about, for better or for worse: in the US, if a congregation wants to receive tax benefits it must organize precisely the way the state tells it to, and this is the manner that the state dictates.
There is another way that the business mindset permeates the Christian churches. The idea that the health of the ‘corporation’ can be measured by the bottom line is rampant. For example, let’s say that a church is struggling financially. Something must change. The solution is to eliminate staff positions. The staff members are turned out into the wind, their livilhood stripped away. The bottom line improves. Conclusion: this is a healthy body.
But it is nonsense. It is nonsense because in the body of Christ, unlike in corporate America, you cannot have ‘health’ at the expense of the brothers and sisters. The bottom line is not the only measure. Indeed, in that it is a measure at all, what it measures is entirely different.
Now, financial realities are financial realities. The point here is not that you can’t have situations where you have to cut staff (or programs, whatever) the point is that you can’t just cut people loose and think that now you’ve improved the body or that you’ve ‘come through a rough patch.’ If the people who have been cut loose are forgotten by the congregation or body of believers and are abandoned by them, I assure you, you haven’t improved the health of the body. Done in this way, you will likely have created very bitter former staffers and in some cases drive them out of the church. But it is important to see that doing it this way is far from intentional. It is the natural consequence of thinking of the congregation’s ‘corporate’ nature as essentially like an American corporation’s nature. Read the rest of the entry… »
I had an invigorating debate this evening with a gentleman who took issue with my analysis regarding the potential overthrow and occupation of the United States, per my book series, Birth Pangs. The blog entry the gent was replying to was my own critique of some Russian analyst arguing that the US is due to collapse in 2010. Apparently the vital flaw in my critique was that I didn’t reject outright the possibility that the US could disintegrate, ever. We are so big and mighty, goes the argument, that we will never be overcome by foreign foes. More likely in this gent’s view is that America descends into another civil war.
While I personally rejected the Russian analyst’s view, it is important to understand why: Igor failed to predict or specify a catalyst. This is what the gentleman who inspired this post himself overlooks: a ‘catalyst’ can happen at any time. We have no assurances for the future. Anything can happen tonight, tomorrow, next week, or next month. At that point, all bets are off. Yes, even for America, ‘big and mighty.’
My Birth Pangs series skips over the 50 to 100 years between now and then and sprinkles catalysts throughout but more importantly links actions and beliefs with consequences- consequences which a study of history and human nature render almost all but inevitable. Inevitable, that is, if nothing is done in the meantime, or when certain points of decision are reached, the ‘right’ decision is made. ‘Right’ decisions are predicated on there being people with the ‘right’ mindset. Ensuring that the ‘right’ mindset exists at that time requires groundwork be laid far earlier… say, now.
So, even though I personally don’t see an end of America in 2010 (even though I see seeds being sown for something eventual) I think it is worth correcting this really dangerous notion that we have something here in America that is unassailable. Things can change quickly: civilization is only skin deep.
On a recent thread on my discussion forum an atheist endorsed the view: “It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.” Of course, this atheist, like all atheists, rejects any notion that heaven and hell are real. Nonetheless, there are a number of reasons for making the argument. It essentially amounts to fundamental rejection of the ‘terms of engagement’ that Christians contend that God has laid out. (This is especially fundamental when the atheist is, as in this example, an Ayn Rand Objectivist). Additional layers of the argument take it as true for the sake of argument that the God of the Bible is real as described but the atheist will retort that they don’t want to have anything to do with a God like that.
So you see, either way you go, either rejecting the existence of the Christian God or accepting it, the atheist possesses some sort of moral standard (which they’d prefer not to explain) by which to measure the conduct of God and the terms he lays out. But I find this all very ironic. After all, the whole point of disgust has to do with people being eternally punished by God and how unfair and indecent that is (“What? Just for not believing?!?!??”) but when it is pointed out that the Bible further describes this eternal punishment as an eternal separation from God (relationally), shut out from his presence forever, they are not satiated? I mean, isn’t that what they wanted? If God turns out to be real and they hate him so much don’t they actually want there to be something like ‘hell’ where God will leave them to their own devices?
Yes it is. Here you see one of those classic “there is no pleasing them” scenarios. Even if there is a God they don’t like him and would rather in that case spend eternity separate from him, but when that actual opportunity is presented to them from the same texts they reject God as being unloving and Christianity (and religion in general) as fear mongering. Dudes. You’re getting what you want. Why complain?
Of course, we Christians understand that getting what you want isn’t all it is cracked up to be. The idea that you could actually ‘rule in hell’ is a joke. The idea that you could actually be happy and contented apart from God is a farce. For all good things come from God- this is according to definition- and to be separated from God means to be separated from these things. One cannot expect that in hell one will have their intellect, food and drink, other people to talk to… all of the things that you count as ‘good’ today and don’t believe have anything to do with God, according to the Christian definition of God, would necessarily be stripped away in the course of ratifying the atheist’s choice of being ‘separated from God.’
Anyway, in the course of the discussion on this matter, a forum member mentioned an old Twilight Zone episode about a man going to heaven and not finding it to his liking. I thought it makes the point nicely. If you don’t want the ending spoiled, I wouldn’t go and read the discussion forum thread first.
(if it doesn’t work go to their twilight zone page and find episode “A nice place to visit.”)
Oh yea, and short answer to “Would an atheist be happy in hell?” is “No, because happiness is, by definition derived from God (assuming he exists), and in hell one is deprived from God.”
God won’t need fire and brimstone to inflict eternal suffering on someone. He needs only to leave them to themselves forever- which is exactly what many atheists want: to be left alone.
Below I have the ‘video’ of my online presentation on the ‘death of Christianity.’ I have been developing a line of thought and the corresponding presentation for about a year. I adapted by presentation for the uniquness of this format. My adaptations reflected the fact that it was a virtual presentation, that it was predominantly a ‘professional’ church work Christian audience, and that it was predominantly a Lutheran Christian audience. Also, the outline of my presentation (unadapted) is about 45 mins, here I only had 30 mins to work with.
I am hosting the video on my ministry’s new Christian file sharing service, emphasizing apologetics videos. The site is www.apologeticsvideos.net. At this time, I am allowing anyone to post apologetics related videos so if you have got them feel free to upload them. (The chief advantage is that there is no time limit on a video. There is, however, a 100mb file size limit)
With no further ado, here is the video of the presentation:
