Ya Really Oughta Know …

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Into the Mystical Abyss

How does God communicate with you?

No, really, it’s a serious question.

People who call themselves Christians have vastly different ideas about how God speaks and how the Holy Spirit leads the believer. As a direct consequence, they also have vastly different ways of living their lives.

I keep coming across things like this:

“Six children’s lives and mine were forever changed when I filed for divorce last November. It was the hardest decision I have had to make. In fact, I didn’t want to make that decision. I pleaded with God for a very long time.”

And yet, strangely, God “led” this evangelical woman to divorce her husband.

Those Ten Lost Tribes (Or Is It Twelve?)

There are few prophetic subjects more hotly contested than the Ten “Lost” Tribes. Maybe the doctrine of the Rapture. Maybe the Pre-/ Post-/ Amillennial divide.

But the folks who get agitated about those issues can’t possibly compete with Alex Christopher. Alex asks “Who Are the Real Israelites?” His answer? Almost every white person on the planet EXCEPT the ones currently living in Israel.

How important is the issue to Alex? “IT IS TIME FOR THE COMMON AMERICAN TO GET UPSET AND INVOLVED,” he shouts [the caps are his, not mine]. Fair warning: Alex actually employs the word “dastardly” to describe the quasi-Jewish conspiracy he is convinced exists, so … you know … judge for yourselves and all that.

The Motive That Matters

Yesterday we looked a little at the difference between rhetoric and lies. Some Christians can’t see that there’s a difference, and that’s okay.

Sure, almost everyone uses rhetoric regularly, so these folks are in for a tough time communicating with others if they eschew it. And I suppose they may struggle to grasp the meaning of the many rhetorical statements found in scripture. Not to mention that they’re going to suffer from epic verbosity, given the necessity of qualifying and contextualizing every statement they make.

Still, if someone wants to hold his speech to a higher standard of accuracy and explicitness, I won’t fight with him. It may be that he’ll manage to successfully communicate with people that you and I could not. And good for him if that’s the case.

So live and let live, I say, at least where the use of rhetoric is concerned.

Whatever Drives the Nail

You really have to watch yourself when you get into a debate in the comments section of your favourite blog.

There’s a certain beauty in being able to engage a large number of people at once. But a line of thought being developed between hundreds of individuals twists and turns and takes on a life of its own. In order to respond to any specific facet of the argument, you have to be quick off the mark or you may wind up saying something redundant. That, or your comment may appear so far from the things it references that it gets lost entirely. 

Thus a fair bit of kneejerking is common among commenters, which on occasion leads to making an idiot of oneself, like I did last night when I briefly found myself arguing something I don’t believe at all.

Sophomores, Sophists and Solipsism

Solipsism is the theory that self is all that exists.

It’s kind of an oddball worldview first enunciated by the Greek sophist Gorgias of Leontini around 400 B.C. Gorgias argued that (i) nothing exists; (ii) even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and (iii) even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others.

Now of course when we refer to someone as “solipsistic” today, we do not generally mean that they are a philosopher of the Gorgian school or that they really believe that everything they experience (including the external world and other people) occurs only in their heads and lacks independent existence. Most solipsists are not philosophers at all; in fact, they may never have even heard the word “solipsism”. They have no specific theories of existence and may never have contemplated reality in the abstract.

They just live and think as if self is all that exists.

Too Hot to Handle: Eternal Insecurity

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The “Loving Society” and Category Error

In 1949’s The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle gives this example: 

“One day a girl visited a college campus. After seeing buildings, teachers, students, and dorms, she looked at the tour guide and sweetly asked, ‘This is all nice, but when do I get to see the university?’ ”

Now I don’t agree with Ryle on too much, but he deserves credit for coining the expression that describes what is wrong with the girl’s thinking in this story. The mistake she makes is called a category error. She has seen buildings, teachers, students and dorms, and thinks a “university” is just one more item in the same category or on the same level as these things. She fails to grasp that all these elements make up the university. The university itself is in a different category.

Christians and unbelievers alike are susceptible to category error.

In Need of Analysis: Saving Sunday Evening

This post is over a year old, but it is carefully written and a study in neutrality. Its subject is the declining interest among evangelicals in attending traditional Sunday evening church services. Thom S. Rainer explores the history of Sunday evening meetings and hazards a cautious speculation or three as to why almost nobody cares about them anymore.

It’s a topic worth discussing, but before we invest too much energy in debating how we might salvage Sunday night, we ought to ask ourselves another, more pressing question first:

Do we really want to?

Depression, Grief, Melancholy and Guilt

Granny says she’s depressed.

Okay, she’s not my granny, and she’s probably not actually depressed either. There’s a chance she is, but in all likelihood she’s grieving, not depressed.

There is a difference.

You see, her husband of many decades went to be with the Lord earlier this year. Her ongoing grief is natural and appropriate; in fact, if at this stage she were said to be feeling fine and spending her time internet shopping for a new partner, the gossips among us would be even more troubled.

But I point this out because where sadness is concerned, our thinking is very muddled these days.

Mission Accomplished

How does the Infinite behave in close proximity with the Very Finite Indeed? (That would be you and me, by the way.)

I struggle with this as I read about the Lord Jesus and his dealings with men. He asked them questions to which, being God incarnate, he already knew the answers. He confronted them with impossible conundrums to bring out what was in their hearts. The common language in which two very different parties may converse and the language of theology are in such (apparent) conflict that we may wonder whether man can ever hope to begin to comprehend the Divine.

And yet that very comprehension seems to be God’s purpose.

Digging In for the Long Haul

On the wall-mounted flatscreen across from my table in the restaurant where I enjoyed lunch today a news item flashed by. It reappeared every three minutes or so until I started to pay attention.

Apparently 77% of Canadians support assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

Canadian doctors, thankfully, are not yet on board with the idea. But of course Dying with Dignity Canada felt compelled to get in an obligatory shot, suggesting the poll validates the Supreme Court decision in February that struck down the federal law against assisted suicide.

Persecution Complex (2)

Rachel Held Evans vs. Reality in ten rounds or less:

Rachel: “For the sake of the gospel, drop the persecution complex.” 

Reality: “Kentucky clerk’s office will issue marriage licenses Friday — without the clerk.”

Rachel: “Not only do American Christians experience complete religious freedom in this country, we also enjoy tremendous privilege.”

Reality: “A Kentucky county clerk [has been] found in contempt of court and held Thursday for her refusal to issue marriage licenses after the Supreme Court decision to allow gays to wed.”

Too Hot to Handle: Islam Fading

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522 Inept Logicians

Fritz von Uhde imagines Mary’s
encounter with “the gardener”

The debate as to whether Jesus actually rose from the dead stands at the centre of Christianity. As the apostle Paul pointed out, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins”.

That being the case, the doctrine of the resurrection could not be more important.

Amy Hall at the Stand to Reason blog has been regularly fielding challenges from the atheistic 522 Reasons Christianity is False website (apparently the name changes daily; they are at 522 reasons and counting). Still, after reading today’s challenge from atheism, I propose we rechristen their blog 522 Inept Logicians.

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?

Another Exercise in Subjectivity

I just read an extimony.

An extimony, I am reliably informed, is sort of an anti-testimony. It’s the story of how a person un-converted from Christianity, becoming an atheist, agnostic, freethinker or Pastafarian, depending on their particular circumstances and bent.

Short version: I was not overly impressed with the arguments of the gentleman who wrote this one.

Let’s Not Make a Habit of It

What does “sin” mean to you? What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I use the word?

Is it something that you’ve done recently? Maybe it’s something that has been done to you. Or is it some remote, vile and peculiar thing that you’ve never engaged in personally but would like to see eradicated from society?

It seems to me that the Lord never dealt with sin as an abstraction. He never addressed the subject in a merely theoretical way. At the well in Sychar he told a Samaritan woman, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband”. 

That’s pretty specific.