A Mark on the Forehead

Three rather obvious lessons from a fairly obscure passage of scripture.

Ezekiel the prophet is sitting at home with a group of Judah’s elders around him when he has one of those very intense visionary experiences that seemed to characterize his relationship with the God of Israel. Some prophets heard voices and others dreamed, but Ezekiel saw overwhelming heavenly splendor — in the middle of his own living room, one assumes.

Do We Need More Church Meetings?

Christians love the church of Acts 2.

Now they’re not wrong about that. The church in Acts 2 is certainly lovable. It looks, at least potentially, like a solution for many of the world’s societal and culture-related ills. It looks like a community steeped in the teaching of Christ and demonstrating practically the various spiritual truths about which he told the world.

It looks, to nick the words of someone or other, like a foretaste of heaven.

Quote of the Day (3)

James Bartholomew of The Spectator on the subject of modern virtue:           

“No one actually has to do anything. Virtue comes from mere words or even from silently held beliefs. There was a time in the distant past when people thought you could only be virtuous by doing things: by helping the blind man across the road; looking after your elderly parents instead of dumping them in a home; staying in a not-wholly-perfect marriage for the sake of the children. These things involve effort and self-sacrifice. That sounds hard! Much more convenient to achieve virtue by expressing hatred of those who think the health service could be improved by introducing competition.”

Star Trek, Salvation and Sermons

A more current version of this post is available here.

Sins and Dominos

The consequences of sinful acts are rarely limited to the life of the sinner. A series of sinful acts can issue in ongoing repercussions. Like dominos.

Many of the circumstances we face in our lives are the product of choices made by our ancestors, by government, neighbours and even our fellow Christians. Much less obviously, in a democracy they are increasingly the result of decisions made by unelected administrative functionaries, more or less by fiat. To dominos it is not apparent what starts the chain reaction that causes their fall.

Dogs, Sorcerers and Saints

I have a Catholic friend who is not a fan of the name Peter. She almost flinches at it. The name has associations, you see.

I think she’s sorta half expecting to meet him someday. Maybe.

In the tradition in which she was raised, Peter stands at the gate of heaven as an endless stream of the dead parade before him. As the man with the keys to the kingdom, she was taught, he personally gives the final decree on whether you go “up” (in her words) or “down” (presumably with his thumb, being the hip fellow Peter is reputed to be), all on the basis of the things you have done in this life.

Too Hot to Handle: Generation Z and Unbelief

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Quote of the Day (2)

Walking home in the rain this morning, I passed a sun-faded, comprehensively rusted-out, seedpod-covered sports car.

The fact that I can’t even hazard a guess as to its make and model is probably a dead giveaway as to how little I’ve ever thought of a vehicle as anything more than a means of getting from Point A to Point B. Nobody but a starry-eyed auto buff with a serious mechanical bent would tolerate this thing in his garage, even for spare parts. It didn’t look salvageable to me.

And yet at one point it was somebody’s dream. Not mine, but if I haven’t fantasized about cars and can’t relate to theirs, I’ve certainly had plenty of dreams of my own.

Ritual and Validation

There is an idea in circulation that has become increasingly popular, and it is that God needs or is somehow validated by our attention, our acts of worship or our fawning, groveling subservience.

In this view, man speaks well of God or prostrates himself before him because God has a well-developed taste for burnt offerings and ritual; because he wants to rub in our faces how magnificent he is and how horrible human beings are by comparison.

Two Suppers

The most recent version of this post is available here. 

Recommend-a-blog (7)

John Lennox is an Irish mathematician, philosopher of science and Christian apologist.

The latter two are instantly evident from any visit to the home page of his website, where a plethora of interviews, videos and articles demonstrate his interest in atheism, creation, evolutionary theory and the coexistence of faith with science, among others.

That Lennox is a mathematics professor is not as obvious until you get into the articles and video, but his Irishness is inescapable.

The “Cultural” Argument

What do we mean when we say a particular passage of scripture is “culturally limited”?

It’s a pretty common argument these days, used to dismiss everything from apostolic teaching about the respective roles of men and women at home and in church to New Testament instructions about sexual purity.

The assertion at its core is that any particular command, principle or example being debated was intended only to address a particular local situation for a limited period of time, not as a directive for the church throughout its history.

But the cultural argument is a powder keg. We need to be careful how we handle it.

Trained or Gifted?

A few posts back I promised to try to answer the question How can we recognize teaching gift?

In one sense the title of this post represents a false dichotomy: why not be both trained AND gifted? In fact, many gifted men are trained, whether in Bible schools, seminaries or less commonly through private mentoring, or discipling. Still, there is a distinction to be made between what can be supplied by a seminary (good study habits, recognition of logical fallacies, general principles of homiletics, familiarity with Greek and Hebrew, etc.) and what can only be supplied by the Holy Spirit of God.

It is the latter set of qualities I’d like to consider.

Too Hot to Handle: Enforcing Conformity

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Consensus and Truth

Truth is an interesting thing.

If every intellectual, expert and scientist in the world could be simultaneously brought to consensus by some particular piece of evidence, would that constitute “truth”?

More importantly, how would we know?

The climate change folks attempted to convince us their popular theory has just about that level of consensus. Motherboard ran an article in 2014 that insisted “0.01 Percent of Climate Scientists Reject Global Warming”.

Hey, if only 1/100 of 1% of climate scientists are against global warming, that must mean everybody important is already on board. So break out the sunblock: anyone who disagrees with us must be nuts!

Babel’s Antidote

Monsù Desiderio, The Tower of Babel

I’m thinking about human relationships, specifically the way we communicate.

I used to take great delight in my facility with language, a skill developed largely because my father read to us incessantly as children: Lewis, Tolkien and other writers consistently above our grade level. As a result, we paid little attention to grammar lessons in school; they were largely redundant. We didn’t need to know a word was a gerund or an adjective to use it aptly in a sentence or to spell it correctly. Such things were innate.

You know the old saw: “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. I figured language was the key to pretty much everything. If one were only logical enough, if one could only make a convincing argument, then everything was potentially within one’s grasp. You could manipulate, coax, coerce or persuade anyone to do just about anything you wanted.

As Relevant as Today’s Headlines

In an opinion piece for The Claremont Independent, Taylor Schmitt waxes eloquent about “How Campus Progressives Ruined Liberalism for the Rest of Us”. 

Coming from a self-avowed leftie and supporter of the legalization of both marijuana and gay marriage, it’s an interesting read. Mr. Schmitt is obviously not about to embrace conservatism, but his lucidity and willingness to call a spade a spade are bound to create serious distance between him and his fellow liberals.

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?

Decently and in Order [Part 2]

The New Testament is not laid out like a textbook or reference manual.

If we’re honest, many of the conclusions generally drawn about first century church order and the way the early Christians conducted themselves when they met together are based on a verse or two here and there and the occasional example. Some things are very clear; others are mainly inference and supposition.

Decently and in Order [Part 1]

The Bible is not a textbook.

Some people treat it like one, but even a cursory look reveals it’s considerably more complex than that. It is a collection of history, poetry, ancient law, prophecy, doctrine, personal letters and more. Despite the fact that it is a compilation, the Bible is somewhat systematic in the sense that there are lessons taught consecutively from Genesis to Revelation that build on what has already been established. That should not surprise us if we believe it to be divinely authored. The final few books (from Romans on) are perhaps the most pointed and direct in addressing how the reader ought to respond to it.

But its format is not “textbook-y” in the least.

Too Hot to Handle: Forgive Us, But …

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Quote of the Day (1)

No. Really? A politician was wrong about something? 

“George W. Bush once said, ‘God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom.’ But that’s just wrong. In fact, how any man who believes in the Bible could believe that, I truly don’t know. The Bible tells how God freed his chosen people the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. He sent them the prophet Moses, he sent them signs and wonders, he rained plagues on their enemies, he defeated the mighty pharaoh and his armies with uncanny heavenly warfare. And when the Lord was done and his chosen people were free, the chosen turned to Moses and said, in effect, ‘We’re hungry! We were better off as slaves!’ ”

— Andrew Klavan

It’s Not a Bug …

How many times have you made an ironic remark that sailed right over someone’s head, said something sarcastic that much to your surprise was taken literally, or made a joke that went over like a lead balloon?

You said one thing. A different interpretation was taken.

In the course of looking into the history of universalist thought, I came across this statement on one of the relevant Wikipedia pages: “The Bible itself has a variety of verses that appear to be contradictory if not given additional reader interpretation.”

That’s worth thinking about for a moment, isn’t it.

Unchristian, Sure … But is it Wrong?

Strictly speaking, an unchristian thought is a desire, wish or inclination that does not conform to the principles taught by Christ.

But the term is frequently used much more broadly in our culture and even in religious circles to describe things considered outright evil. If a sentiment is unchristian, the assumption is often that it is automatically wicked, uncivilized or unconscionable. 

And in many cases, that’s quite true. But maybe not in every case.

Is it possible, perhaps, to be “unchristian” without being wrong?

Unintended Consequences

When they passed the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) in 2007, it is quite unlikely that the U.S. congress anticipated that their little bill would trigger a cereal grain price jump of 67.4% in 2012 or that the rise in food prices would plunge nearly 70 million people into what the World Bank calls ‘extreme poverty’. The Houston Chronicle details the extent of the problem here.

Christians Are Not Exempt

If you think it looks easy, try a few lines ...

The prosperity gospel is bunk. This is not a profound revelation.

Anyone who pays attention to the word of God is aware that in the ordinary course of things, we Christians are not exempt from the ills of the world. Believers do not get a free pass on pain and suffering. God’s primary concern for us is not that we “have a good self-image and feel right about ourselves”, notwithstanding Joel Osteen’s latest work of fiction.

Most Christians understand this in principle, but when it’s my life that’s being put through the wringer, I may have a little more trouble than usual believing it.

Which Jesus Do You Worship?

The world is full of frustrated people. Some of them are even Christians. Specifically, some dissatisfied searchers are looking to understand Jesus Christ.

Now on the surface that sounds like a very good thing, doesn’t it? Pursuing understanding of the Lord Jesus is about the finest activity in which a human being can be engaged, at least in my experience.

But there are ways of pursuing the knowledge of Christ that may be quite a let-down; roads of spiritual inquiry which we may travel only to find a dead end or a bridge out.

Too Hot to Handle: When We ALL Get to Heaven

The most recent version of this post is available here.

What’s at the Centre?

What — or rather Who — controls the forces in play here?

Do you ever think certain Christians may be just a little bit too nitpicky about things that don’t matter a whole lot? If so, this might be one of those times.

Or not, depending. Bear with me here.

There’s a sign outside a little old moss-covered urban church building that I drive by on the way to work. It reads like this: “Welcome to Jesus, the centre of the spiritual universe.”

The Problem with Compassion

Compassion is a fine quality. But an excess of emotion without appropriate practical follow-up always seems to end very badly indeed.

Now I’m not talking about Leftist social engineering, professional fundraising or the welfare state when I use the word “compassion”. Such projects are promoted as compassionate and claim a tender-hearted motive but produce little effect. Professional fundraisers often absorb most of the funds they raise. The welfare system is so administration-heavy and fraud-ridden that handing stacks of cash to the visibly distressed on the street might well mitigate the effects of poverty more efficiently.

We may credit Progressives and Redistributionists with good intentions if we are being generous, but those ideologies have never been effective at producing their desired outcome — the only metric by which we may judge the fruits of compassion.

Content-Free Christianity

Christianity ... without all the nasty Christian bits.

Watch out: it’s catching on.

I mean, I thought Gretta Vosper was impressively brassy. (For those unfamiliar with Gretta, she’s the atheist United Church minister and author who doesn’t believe in the historical Christ. She has a congregation of less than 50 and thinks things are great. And don’t forget, you can have her new book Amen delivered to your door for just a little over Cdn$45 if you suspect she might have something profound to say about ... not believing.)

But though she’d be content to amend the word “God” to read “good” and carry on with many of the traditional forms tweaked only slightly, at least she seems to understand that she is not a Christian.

Enoch-in’ on Heaven’s Door

From the 1728 Figures de la Bible
illustrated by Gerard Hoet (1648–1733)

Sorry. Dylan puns just kinda make themselves.

I may have mentioned in an earlier post that Jude has an interesting way of referencing Old Testament stories: he seems to know considerably more about them than the original writers told us.

One explanation is that Jude was a prophet, and in writing a letter that was itself God-breathed and therefore not subject to the normal limitations of knowledge under which most writers labor, he was free to introduce entirely new revelation. Another possibility is that written or oral Jewish religious lore was transmitted more extensively and more accurately than we know, and that the Old Testament only contains a portion of the truth revealed to man by God over the centuries during which it was compiled (though of course all the necessary bits).

A Focus On Tomorrow

In modern cultures, usually not much goes into a name. Names aren’t often chosen for their profundity. For example, Bernie means “bold as a bear”. Does that reflect my character fully? If you ask those who know me best as an adult, it probably doesn’t.

However, very often in the Bible there is additional depth to a name. Matthew 16 is a common enough example that has drawn the interest of theologians for generations; what did Peter’s naming really signify? But there are many other famous examples that are less controversial; Saul became Paul, Abram became Abraham and so on.

In each case there was a reason that someone’s name was changed and that reason is worth exploring.

The Next [De]Generation

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: Fundamentalism and Modernism

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Non-Canonical Episodes

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Salvaging Corporate Prayer

“Hello? Hello? Is there anybody here?”

How awful is corporate prayer in your church?

You know, that thing that happens when one or more Christians publicly address the Lord on behalf of the entire congregation.

Are such prayers predictable? Painfully long? Full of clichés? Do the same requests get repeated multiple times, sometimes within the same prayer? Do you find yourself struggling to stay awake? Do some of the requests seem merely pro forma? Are there fellow Christians whose prayers make you grind your teeth? Do you feel guilty for occasionally thinking that you’re wasting your time, even though you know prayer is a staple of church life and, in principle at least, pleasing to God? Are there ever meetings entirely dedicated to prayer, or has your church given up on such things? If there are, do you avoid them?

If you answered yes to many or most of these questions, it’s possible you’re completely unspiritual. On the other hand …

Denominations and Discernment

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Testing, Testing …

What happened in the garden of Eden — and the resulting fall of mankind and the subjection of creation to the futility that we observe daily — has been the subject of near-endless discussion over the centuries. Much speculation is on record as to the motives of God in the test presented to Adam and Eve.

And that’s what it is: speculation. We may have all kinds of ideas why God did what he did, but in scripture we do not find the answer spelled out for us. Wise men are careful not to draw conclusions that go beyond the available evidence.

Despising the Clans

I was working on Thursday’s post on denominationalism when I came across a little statement in Jeremiah that may give us some insight as to how the Lord feels about divisions in the church.

Sorry, this one needs a little setting up, as I’m not going to assume all our readers are currently engrossed in simultaneous study of the Old Testament prophets.

Straight Talk

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: The New Atheists are Scared (or Angry)

The most recent version of this post is available here.

By Any Other Name

Pretty, but you get better light when it’s in one piece ...

What is the church, really?

If we want to understand the concept as God designed it and as he sees it, we have to start with the New Testament. The truth about the church cannot be known any other way. Sure, there are lots of invented, historical ways in which we may conceptualize the church. But if we believe in the inspiration of the Bible, this is where we need to begin.

Recommend-a-blog (6)

The Christian blogosphere: you get content or you get good delivery. One rarely seems to find the two together.

Rachel Held Evans’ site and many like it are state of the art, if you can stomach the social justice whining: nice graphics, clean presentation and efficient messaging perfectly calibrated for her target audience. She and others like her market themselves and their opinions with a scrupulous professionalism and — oh yeah —reliably mutilate scripture on an almost-daily basis, if you enjoy that sort of thing.

Meanwhile numerous well-written and biblical posts get ignored because their authors haven’t the wherewithal to format them attractively and make them even slightly readable or their host sites convenient to navigate.

An Ill-Advised Shortcut

I dislike buzzphrases, I really do. I dislike them especially in the spiritual realm.

When we employ the words of scripture, understanding what they mean and using them in their appropriate context, we are safeguarded by the Holy Spirit who carried along each human author as he wrote. If the Lord himself could say “not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished”, we can confidently affirm that, in this fallen world, we are as safe as it is possible to be in sticking close to the language that God himself has used to communicate his thoughts to mankind.

There are still plenty of ways to err in trying to pass on truth, of course, but we are that much closer to authorial intent in preserving the Author’s language.

Jargon terms and trendy attempts to encapsulate scriptural concepts, on the other hand, are horribly prone to misapplication.

The term “spiritual abuse” is one such buzzphrase.

Quality Control

Knowledge is not enough.

We know this, of course. Where the Christian life is concerned, it’s first principles that real blessing is reserved for those of us who not only hear the words of Christ but who act on the wisdom we have heard. Believers who are satisfied with mere exposure to truth are kidding themselves. There is no reward for head-knowledge, and neither testimony nor substance in the Christian who prides himself in it.

Do Christians Hate Science?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Liars and Motivation

Positivity and truth are not interchangeable

What drives a person to say something he or she knows is false?

When the stakes are fairly insignificant, without some counterbalancing sense of right and wrong, almost any trivial motive will do: desire for attention or status, concern about the potential consequences of an action we’ve taken and now wish to disclaim, a wish for petty revenge on a rival or even a distaste for the conflict and complications that often arise when one is completely honest.

But what about when the issues at stake are significant, maybe eternal? Whatever would possess someone to lie about the testimony of God?

Too Hot to Handle: Facts and Opinions

The most recent version of this post is available here.

One of These Things …

… is NOT like the other.

Christianity. Feminism. Not an easy fit.

That’s not just my take; it’s the view of both Christians and feminists.

“Cognitive dissonance” is a term used to describe the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. Normally, those who really understand third-wave feminism and genuinely grasp Christianity ought to experience mental stress trying to reconcile the two. At bare minimum a healthy dollop of discomfort is in order. Don’t take my word for it or dwell too much on what feminism may have meant in previous generations. Go look at what it means now and tell me if, when each is rightly understood, the  ideological common ground between the two systems is anything but microscopic.

Of course, if you don’t realize your beliefs are incompatible, no dissonance occurs.

Metaphorical Mites

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The End of Evangelism

The most recent version of this post is available here.

That Day and Hour

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

How Saved Are You?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The Emptiness of the West

In a post entitled “ISIS and the Missing Christ”, Andrew Klavan points out that in the post-post-Christian western world, there’s no “there” here:

“As much as I believe in capitalism as a method of economic development, a capitalist life is empty without spiritual content. Indeed, as much as I believe in individual freedom as the only worthwhile goal of any political system, individual freedom too is empty without spiritual content.

It is in that emptiness that militant Islam grows like the cancer it is.”

Too Hot to Handle: Sexuality and Public Education

The most recent version of this post is available here.

What Are You Worth to God?

I may enjoy sports a bit too much — I’ll watch virtually anything involving competition and victory or defeat. Being a lifelong Cleveland Browns fan, I have become intimately familiar with the defeat side of the competition equation. 

But because I’m a sports fan, I’ve chosen a very common sports object — a baseball — with which to draw a parallel.

There are three distinct ways to value anything at all, including either a baseball or a human life.

The Faithful Have Vanished

“The faithful have vanished”, David wrote.

Not that the faithful have been exterminated and evil has finally won the day. Not that the faithful have apostatized or lost their salt.

They’ve vanished. Elvis has left the building, folks.

This is not simply David’s personal experience here. No way, not without at least some exaggeration or hyperbole. Matthew Henry says, “It is supposed that David penned this psalm, in the latter part of Saul’s reign, when there was a general decay of honesty and piety, when religion, truth, and righteousness, seemed ready to expire, and every kind of wickedness was without control.”

Yeah, I suppose. Maybe.

So You Want to Serve God ...

A more current version of this post is available here.

Debunking Baptismal Myths #5: Faith By Proxy

Tired of this yet? Me too. I promise: last one.

We’re looking in depth at a series of objections raised by one of our readers to the Protestant argument that one must be a believer to be baptized.

Two of these are specific to a single verse in Acts 16, so we’ll deal with them together. They concern the baptism of a woman from Thyatira and those of her household.

Higher Learning

A more current version of this post is available here.

Recommend-a-blog (5)

I don’t think we’ve posted much on the subject of biblical commendation. If we have, I didn’t tag it appropriately and can’t find it now. [IC, that’s a really unsubtle cue …]

Happily, even if we fail to deliver, there remains a blogosphere. James Gibbons makes three timely and relevant observations about commendation in a post that you should read if you’ve ever thought about serving the Lord outside your own local church.

Currently, the practice of commendation is poorly understood among evangelicals and completely irrelevant in high churches.

Too Hot to Handle: Bury or Burn?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Debunking Baptismal Myths #4: Trump Cards and Semantic Ranges

We’re looking in depth at a series of objections raised by one of our readers to the Protestant argument that one must be a believer to be baptized.

One such objection cites the words of Peter to Jews in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost right after the Holy Spirit had come upon the disciples. The sound from heaven of a mighty, rushing wind drew Jews from all around, and upon their arrival they found a group of Galileans mysteriously speaking in languages ranging from those of Mesopotamia to those of Crete and the Arab nations.

Two Crowns

“And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head …”
(Matthew 27:29)

This event is recorded in three of the gospels and has become the basis for many paintings over the centuries. A crown of thorns is commonly referenced in pop culture and there are relatively few who aren’t familiar with the Christian source of the image.

But pause for a moment and ask yourself this: where would someone get a crown of thorns? These are not naturally occurring items that come easily to hand at a moment’s notice. Instead — as the gospel accounts tell us — such a crown needs to be woven together; it would actually require some skill, care and time.

Traitors at the Table

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Chasing Equality

Everybody wants to be equal. It’s the way of the world.

But equality means different things to different people. When hardline feminists or politicized homosexuals say they want equality, what they really mean is superiority. They are looking to acquire a trump card through which they will be able to dictate how they are treated — and even thought of — by the rest of society.

Not “equal” exactly, is it.

There’s also the question “Equality by what metric?” to consider. If by equality we mean that every human being ought to be considered as strong, smart or useful to society as every other, we are clearly talking rubbish.

That’s easy to say from my position of “privilege” as a white male, of course.

Christ Where He Doesn’t Belong

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Debunking Baptismal Myths #3: Baptizing the Household

We’re looking in depth at a series of objections raised by one of our readers to the Protestant argument that one must be a believer to be baptized.

One such objection cites New Testament references to the baptism of entire households. Though there is no evidence at all to demonstrate that this involved anyone other than believing family members, it is suggested that this provides support for the practice of infant baptism.

Too Hot to Handle: The “No Harm” Argument

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Many Fishers and Many Hunters

In France: the Telegraph declares “the exodus has begun”.

In Germany, according to the BBC, “anti-Semitism is acceptable again”. They tell the story of a rabbi who no longer wears his skullcap in certain parts of Berlin after being assaulted last year. 

And The Tower says Denmark — all of Scandinavia, really — has become “home to a scary, new form of anti-Semitism”.

Universal Human Rights: The Christian Legacy

The most current version of this post is available here.

Debunking Baptismal Myths #2: Baptism and Belief

We’re looking in depth at a series of objections raised by one of our readers to the Protestant argument that one must be a believer to be baptized.

First off, Protestants would almost universally concur with the statement that it is possible to be baptized and not be a believer. Not good, but certainly possible. It happens. Rightly or wrongly, evangelical churches vet prospective candidates for baptism quite thoroughly in the hope of avoiding that exact situation. Baptizing an unbeliever — and possibly giving him or her a false sense of security about whether he or she has actually found peace with God through faith in Christ — is something most Christians want no part of.

Breaking Your Own Compass

The most recent version of this post is available here.

A Horse Plunging Headlong

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Debunking Baptismal Myths #1: Suffer the Children

The scripture is certainly open to interpretation, and just about every possible interpretation of every possible verse has probably been advanced by someone or other since the Bible was compiled early in what is now referred to as the Common Era.

We Can Both Be Wrong, But …

One thing must be understood about interpretation, and that is this: It is very possible (though unlikely, given that the Holy Spirit was given to guide us into all truth) that every extant interpretation of a verse is wrong, and that believers in general have not yet grasped the meaning of a particular passage. In other words, we might all be wrong.

Too Hot to Handle: Church Is Too Easy

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Impossible to Renew [Part 2]

Having established the context, therefore, we may move on to a closer look at the passage in question:

“For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.” (Hebrews 6:4-8)

This Passage does NOT Refer to Christians

Several phrases are used here which seem to imply that the audience are believers: they have been “enlightened”, they have “tasted the heavenly gift”, they have “shared in the Holy Spirit”. This is strong language to use of the unsaved. Doesn’t it, then, refer to Christians? Despite the controversy on this subject, we believe that the answer is no.

Impossible to Renew [Part 1]

This passage in the book of Hebrews has caused consternation to many a believer, and been the source of much controversy among Christians generally:

“For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.” (Hebrews 6:4-8)

Eternal Insecurity

Read superficially, it strikes fear into the heart, for it seems at first to imply that those who have put their faith in Christ for salvation can lose that salvation.

Infinite Improbability and the Multiverse Hypothesis

The most recent version of this post is available here.

By Special Request

Stephen Fry’s little burrowing friend ...

Probably to his regret, in the process of trashing the Christian God comedian Stephen Fry ran into the logic buzzsaw that is libertarian Vox Day.

Fry was doing an interview for an Irish television show called The Meaning of Life. When asked if he thought he would get to heaven (Irish interview shows apparently ask more intelligent questions than their American counterparts), he decided to pontificate on the character of God.

Sceptics, Seekers and Opponents

Some fences are not for sitting

Vox Day has an interesting piece on the subject of A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian, a book written with the purpose of teaching, in Boghossian’s own words, “how to talk people out of their faith”.

Day makes the point that Boghossian’s position could not be more distant from that of authentic scepticism: “Boghossian’s very stated purpose is in direct and explicit opposition to everything Sextus Empiricus advises, beginning with ‘suspension of judgment’ ”.

Naturally a reader engages him on this.

When the End Comes

So what will you do when the end comes? It’s a really good question.

Relax, this is not another regular instalment in my frequent “end of the world looms imminent” meme. I’m not thinking about the end of our current world order, or about the end of the Church Age, or even about the end of our own natural lives.

The quote comes from Jeremiah, actually, and “the end” has to do with the time that God’s judgment falls. That’s not God’s eternal judgment concerning where your or I will spend eternity, and it’s not God’s future judgment of the world and its nations. It’s the point in life, individually or corporately, in which things get so bad and so damaging and so pointless and selfish that God simply cannot fail to step in and demonstrate the folly of our ways in a very tangible, painful way during this life.

Too Hot to Handle: Baptized Into What?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The Implacability of Hatred

Some bright spark (okay, got it now, it was a former Dutch cabinet minister, not just your garden-variety bright spark) last week suggested a unique solution to bring about peace in the Middle East.

Ready? Okay, here it is: Force Israel’s entire population to move to the United States.

Leave aside all the other current mid-east hotspots, the “Arab Spring” that turned out to be an Islamic Spring, ISIS, U.S. failure to change hearts and minds on the ground in Iraq and so on, and let’s suppose Herman Heinsbroek’s idea has a hope in Hades of actually bringing about lasting peace in Palestine.

Whistling Past the Graveyard

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Christianity Lite

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Saturn and Uniformitarianism

Maggie McKee at Nature.com has an interesting piece on the difficulties that a number of recent scientific discoveries pose for uniformitarians, several of them related to study of the planet Saturn.

For instance, Saturn’s rings, which are 90% water ice, should be darker than they are if they were actually formed 4 billion years ago as originally assumed. Comets and asteroids shed dust that in theory ought to darken the rings over time. So the rings are either younger than previously thought, or … something.