Angels Unawares

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

In accepting the truth that there exists a world of spirits, a unseen reality beyond that which we can observe and quantify, we open ourselves to a range of possibilities we are far from equipped to explore intelligently.

How does a Christian process such a thing?

Something Worth Dying For

So I’m lunching in my favourite café.

You will forgive me for eavesdropping, I’m sure. If you’ve ever done the lunch thing in a major metropolis on a main street, you know that bodies are close together and overhearing one another is usually unavoidable.

Well, forgive me or don’t, but a group of five a few feet away are discussing a friend who, after all their best efforts to cure him, remains “religious”. Poor benighted fellow.

And I’m thinking … where does this come from, this compulsion to strip others of the comfort of faith?

The Sincerest Form

Imitation ... or caricature?

My uncle, having lived in England all his life, has an accent. It is strong and distinctive.

On occasion, my brother deliberately imitates him to humorous effect. You might think his version of my uncle exaggerated until you hear the real thing, when it becomes clear my brother’s homage may well not go far enough. Other times, in conversation with my uncle, one or another of his Canadian relatives finds himself unconsciously picking up and mimicking my uncle’s speech patterns.

Imitation may be conscious or unconscious, but it is always an action (as opposed to a state of mind). It is something you have to DO. Thinking about imitating someone is not imitation.

Quote of the Day (19)

I find the following paragraph from C.R. Hallpike’s Do We Need God to be Good? An Anthropologist Considers the Evidence rather striking:

“This powerful and important doctrine for right living was worked out in great philosophical detail in Greece, India, and China; we do not find it in explicit form in the Old Testament which was not philosophically minded, but in the New Testament St. Paul added the religious virtues of faith, hope, and charity to the classical virtues of justice, reasonableness, courage, and self-control.”

I’m far from agreeing with Hallpike on everything, but he’s got me thinking with that line. The Old Testament, he says, was “not philosophically minded”.

Under the Shadow

People do things. Things good or bad, generous or selfish, trustworthy or manipulative, wise or horrendously ill-considered.

Paul tells the Corinthian church that the people of Israel were examples. The things that they did in the desert on the way to Canaan and the things that happened to them as a consequence of their behaviour were written down to instruct us, “on whom the end of the ages has come”.

It seems reasonable to assume this is true of most of Bible history: it happened, not randomly but with divine purpose. And we can benefit from observing the mistakes and successes of those who lived thousands of years before us, avoiding the former and pursuing the latter.

What Should We Think About Death?

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Be Careful What You Outgrow

John Pavlovitz has decided he’s outgrown American Christianity.

I am not losing my mind.
I’m not losing my faith.
I’m not failing or falling or backsliding.
I have simply outgrown American Christianity.

Okay. Well then.

To a certain extent I can sympathize with the sentiment, though perhaps the word “outgrown” might not be the one I’d reach for first.

The Danger of Ordinary

Do you ever find yourself doing essentially the same thing day after day, year after year, and wondering if this is all there is to the Christian life? Sure, you pray, you read your Bible, you spend time with other believers and with the Lord. Most of us look for and find a way to serve God at various times in our lives and plug away at it, sometimes for years. There are precious, encouraging and sometimes exciting moments; there are answers to prayer and things for which we may be very grateful indeed.

But the rest of it? We have to admit it’s usually pretty ordinary.

Who Is Being Tested Here?

Carol Delaney, an anthropologist at Stanford who doesn’t believe in God, is trying to analyze the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac.

How might such an endeavour go wrong? Let me count the ways ...

A Prior Note About Motivation

When digging up Delaney’s paper I could not help but notice that nearly everyone else who has published something on this subject starts with the question “Why did God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son?” With all respect, that’s grabbing the wrong end of the stick. Or really, asking the unanswerable.

From the Cat’s Perspective

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Insulting Our Intelligence

Another Stand to Reason atheist challenge, this one plucked out of an article in Salon:

“[I]t insults our intelligence to be enjoined to believe, now that we have split the atom, discovered the Higgs Boson, and sent a probe to Pluto, in the veracity of a supernatural account of the origins of our cosmos.”

There are probably half a dozen ways to approach a statement like this. I’m just going to go with the obvious …

Too Hot to Handle: Biocentrism and Reality

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Has Science Buried God?

Mathematician Dr. John Lennox addressed the question at Rice University Monday night, and his answer is well worth the time:

Don’t be put off by the length of the video (1 hr 53 min). Lennox is not introduced until 00:13:20 and does not address his subject until around the 26 minute mark. He winds up by approximately 01:12:00, so the actual speech is only about 45 minutes. Everything after that is simply Dr. Lennox answering questions posed by the audience.

Cultural Heritage and Faith

The lines are getting blurrier and blurrier.

The U.S. Constitution codified an Americanized version of British Common Law tradition that went all the way back to the 11th century and became the basis for the American identity and a culture that, for good or ill, has been unique in human history.

Now that identity is disappearing in America; drowning under wave after wave of unassimilated immigrants. This is not a new development. It has been going on for decades but has been steadfastly ignored by the political class. Republicans are happy because their corporate benefactors profit from cheap labour and continue to prop up their fading political hopes. Democrats are happy because immigrants and welfare dependents swell the ranks of potential Democrat voters.

Everyone (except perhaps the American middle class) benefits, so it is thought. Why rock the boat?

Well, the boat is rocking now. And we might wonder what the attitude of the American Christian caught in the middle of the culture wars really ought to be.

Too Hot to Handle: What’s the Point?

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Too Hot to Handle: Eternal Insecurity

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College / University Survival Guide [Part 2]

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College / University Survival Guide [Part 1]

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What Else Would You Expect?

You’re thinking about Christianity.

Perhaps you’re intellectually dissatisfied with the pat answers the world offers to questions of meaning and truth. Perhaps you’ve been impressed by a neighbor, friend or co-worker who says she loves Jesus Christ and is anything but a cliché about her faith. Perhaps … well, it doesn’t really matter what the reason is, does it?

But if you’re thinking it may be worth examining the Bible more carefully, what might you expect to find there?

The Dangerous Faith

Other than while acting in the service of governments, real Christians don’t generally use guns, knives or bombs on our fellow men. We’re not looking to conquer the world by force of arms. Instead, we seek to persuade men and women of the truth of what we believe.

In theory, persuasion is a fairly inoffensive process compared to, say, armed invasion. Still, some people respond to the Christian faith with outright hostility. Others are more laid back, a subject we touched on in a post a few days ago.

But as Immanuel Can notes in the comments, our dealings with mellow agnostics are just as much “warfare” as when we engage with hostiles, and may be perceived as threatening even when the message is graciously and lovingly delivered.

Too Hot to Handle: Atheists in Foxholes

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Too Hot to Handle: The Christian Nation

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Nothing To Fear

Some years ago I drove through upstate New York on my way to visit a client in Massachusetts. The road rose and fell as we wove our way through the Adirondack Mountains and I was amused to see signs like the one pictured on a regular basis; there were dozens of them. I wondered about them a fair bit as we drove because really, if you’re driving a car over a mountain pass with vertical drops on the immediate left and right side of the car and you see a plane approaching the front windshield, well, what exactly does one do aside from brace for impact?

Where I live and work there is not a single one of these signs. There never has been and I dare say there never will be and the reason is pretty simple: There are no mountains here at all. So even though it is always good advice to be wary of low flying aircraft, the warning is only needed and provided when there is an actual risk that there could possibly be an impact. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it?

Too Hot to Handle: When We ALL Get to Heaven

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What’s Behind Faith?

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That Sinking Feeling

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Judgment and Discernment

“This is a Christian country. I go to a Christian church. I believe in God and the Bible, so what right have you to judge me and tell me I’m not a Christian?” 

A question like this must be handled with care. It is certainly possible to conclude from a person’s life and actions that they are not living in a Christlike way; it may be discerned and pointed out that their beliefs about salvation and the Christian life are not in harmony with what the Bible teaches. But ultimately the question of whether a person is a ‘real’ Christian or not can be answered only by God, or in the case of a genuine child of God, by the individual believer.

Those who lack saving faith may not even be fully aware of it themselves.

Faith of the Calvinists

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Head to Head: Theism and the Skeptics [Part 2]

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Head to Head: Theism and the Skeptics [Part 1]

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Big Questions and the Loss of Faith

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Science Redux

David Berlinski does what I can’t (but certainly tried to) in a Peter Robinson interview appropriately entitled Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions. He quotes from his book The Devil’s Delusion:

“In many respects, the word ‘naturalism’ comes closest to conveying what scientists regard as the spirit of science: the source of its superiority to religious thought. But what reason is there to conclude that everything is, to quote philosopher Alexander Byrne, ‘an aspect of the universe … revealed by the natural sciences’? There is no reason at all.”

He comments on the validity of certain scientists’ claim to authority:

“The comparable claim would be, ‘(a) I’m a scientist; (b) I’m an expert on contract law’. You’re an expert on contract law because you’ve studied particle physics? Give me a break. An expert on the existence of God because you’ve studied particle physics? I request the same break, the same suspension of belief, the same absence of commitment to whatever it is you’re saying.”

‘Sola Fide’: Can It Be Enough Just To Believe?

Many denominations and sects teach that putting faith in Christ is not enough to save.

They claim that in order to gain or to keep one’s salvation it is necessary to try and keep at least part of the Old Testament Law. 

So what does Scripture say?

Since the beginning man’s pride has driven him to try and please God by his own efforts. The Bible says that man must cease wanting to boast of his own righteousness and recognize that he can do nothing to merit God’s favor: salvation is by God’s grace alone.

Two Kinds of Hard Hearts

“And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.” (Mark 6:52)

I’m thinking about all the times I’ve failed to respond to something in the word of God that should’ve been obvious to me.

See, I don’t believe every reference to a “hard heart” in Scripture means precisely the same thing.

The pharaoh of Egypt in the book of Exodus had a hard heart. He wanted to keep Israel in slavery, and was prepared to continue doing so no matter what miracles he saw. He was a man who put political expediency and ill-gotten profit ahead of justice, fear of God or even his own five senses.

That’s one kind of hardness.

All The Time You Need To Get Saved

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There Is No ‘Plan B’

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Mysticism and Salvation

I am about as far from a mystic as anyone I’ve ever met.

I lack the sort of conversion story other believers often point to; the type of testimony that includes phrases like “I asked God …” and “I felt a strange sense of peace come over me”; the type of experience that leads you to write a date in the front of your Bible and remember it the rest of your life. All I have is a vague recollection of an emotional moment as a child on a front porch somewhere and the dawning realization that Jesus died for me, but memory is malleable and inaccurate more often than not.

So, like I do with everything else, I check boxes: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord” [check], and “believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead” [check], “you will be saved” [check and double-check]. 

That’s the word of God, and it gives me more confidence than the recollection of any experience or feeling.

Immanuel Can sums it up perfectly in this recent post: “So how can we know? The Father loves the Son. Surprisingly, this is the essential answer we have been looking for.”

No experience can be more reassuring than that. So, mysticism, yeah … not really my thing.

Your Father Who Is In Secret

It takes courage to stand up and pray in public if you’re shy by nature, but only a little more than must be mustered to spill your guts on Facebook or Twitter. And judging by the number of people doing that, it must feel pretty good. If you’re the type of person who by nature loves to be the centre of attention, it doesn’t take any courage at all to pray in public. It’s like swimming to a duck.

It certainly doesn’t require faith.

It doesn’t take faith to attend church meetings or to put money in an offering box. These things may be done for right reasons or wrong reasons. Church, or even giving, can be a habit, a social event, a way of feeling good about oneself, a duty or an obligation imposed by family. Such acts are done visibly and because of that, there are other possible benefits than rewards of a spiritual kind.

They don’t require faith

Miracles and Compassion

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Not of Faith

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I Commit My Spirit

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Your Father Who Is In Secret

It takes courage to stand up and pray in public if you’re shy by nature, but only a little more than must be mustered to spill your guts on Facebook or Twitter. And judging by the number of people doing that, it must feel pretty good. If you’re the type of person who by nature loves to be the centre of attention, it doesn’t take any courage at all to pray in public. It’s like swimming to a duck.

It certainly doesn’t require faith.

It doesn’t take faith to attend church meetings or to put money in an offering box. These things may be done for right reasons or wrong reasons. Church, or even giving, can be a habit, a social event, a way of feeling good about oneself, a duty or an obligation imposed by family. Such acts are done visibly and because of that, there are other possible benefits than rewards of a spiritual kind.

They don’t require faith