# articles

title: How Christianity Created Science (and Why Atheism Wouldn’t Have)
topic: Science
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 05/09/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/how-christianity-created-science-and-why-atheism-wouldn-t-have-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>It takes some imagination to grasp how radically different ancient worldviews were from our Western perspective. Much of what we now take for granted as being common sense was not actually common throughout human history. Rather, our particular worldview was built over time on a foundation of unique ideas, and Rodney Stark, author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-West-Won-Neglected-Modernity/dp/1610170857/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_har?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1399072275&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=how+the+west+won" target="_blank"><em>How the West Won</em></a>, argued in a recent <a href="http://www.dennisprager.com/stark-west-won-neglected-story-triumph-modernity/" target="_blank">radio interview</a> that it’s the Western view of God that made the biggest difference for us:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>It’s pretty obvious...that the Judeo-Christian concept of God held the key to the rise of the West, and that is the belief in a rational Creator God, because that had the implication, then, that the creation was itself rational—that is to say, it obeys rules. The rules are reasonable, rational. Consequently, since humans have the ability to reason, it might be possible to discover the rules of the creation. And that was the whole basis of science.</p>

<p>Science only happened in the West. And the reason it happened [is] because only in the West was science <em>plausible</em>. Elsewhere, it was thought that the universe was eternal, that it was mystical, that it was beyond understanding and human comprehension. We could meditate on it, but we couldn’t try to discover the rules that made it work.</p>

<p>People like Newton believed that there were rules to be discovered, and the marvelous thing, of course, is there <em>were</em> rules that could be discovered.</p>

<p>So in one sense, the greatest scientific theory of all is that the universe is rational. And it’s been tested again and again, as people have discovered these rational rules by which everything works. That’s the key to the whole rise of the West.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Very often, atheists will lump all ancient religions together, imagining that <em>any</em> belief in the supernatural necessarily conjures up a chaotic, unpredictable universe in the minds of the believers. But it was actually the <em>opposite</em> with Christianity. It was only a belief in the biblical God that <em>rescued</em> people from a chaotic-universe mindset.</p>

<p>Atheists need to use their imaginations to strip away what our culture has unreflectively absorbed from Christianity and think about how they would see the world if Christianity had never existed.</p>

<p>Imagine if at the beginning of human history every human being had a naturalistic understanding of the universe—everything was thought to have come together randomly, as atoms happened to bump into atoms, with no reason for its existence. No design, no purpose to the way the universe developed. That foundational idea would have invoked not the view of today’s naturalist scientist (whose view grew out of our culture’s ancient Christian belief in an ordered universe), but a worldview every bit as chaotic as any that rested on capricious gods. Who, in a culture developing under a belief in a meaningless, random universe where something might at any moment come out of nothing, would have thought to search for rational, predictable natural laws?</p>

<p>An atheistic understanding of the universe does not naturally lead to the pursuit of science, nor does a supernatural view automatically lead there. Only in a culture with a belief in a rational, orderly, sovereign Creator—where it’s believed a reasonable <em>mind</em> is behind things—would science be likely to appear. And a look at world history backs up that conclusion.</p>

<p>Now let’s take this one step further: No worldview other than one with a Creator would likely have brought people to science, and yet it turns out that science <em>is</em> an accurate way of discovering truth about our world—that is, the scientific laws predicted by a worldview with a biblical concept of God, and unexpected in any other worldview, actually exist.</p>

<p>Why is that?</p>
</div>

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title: Our Culture Persuades and Is Persuaded Not by Reason, but by Advertising
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 05/13/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/our-culture-persuades-and-is-persuaded-not-by-reason-but-by-advertising
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I came across a <a href="http://alastairadversaria.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/rob-bell-and-don-draper-the-ad-mans-gospel/" target="_blank">post</a> written last year by Alastair Roberts, and though it’s specifically about how Rob Bell (and other postmodern Christians) seek to persuade others, the insight he has into Rob Bell’s style applies to a great number of people in our culture, and not just in the area of religion:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The ad man doesn’t persuade his customer by making a carefully reasoned and developed argument, but by subtly deflecting objections, evoking feelings and impressions, and directing those feelings and harnessing those impressions in a way that serves his interests. Where the lawyer argues, the ad man massages...</p>

<p>Advertisers can be masters of eliciting feelings and states of mind... Vague and indefinite terms that will be filled with highly emotive states (e.g. ’spiritual’, ’transcendent’, ’wonder’—words which almost always carry great emotional resonance for any hearer) and prose that seems to be saying something profound without making much of a specific claim is fairly typical here...</p>

<p>I am a fan of the TV show <em>Mad Men</em>, set in an ad agency in 1960s New York. The show’s chief protagonist, the charismatic philanderer, Don Draper, puts this point well... ’You are the product. You, feeling something.’</p>

<p>The ad man knows this secret, and so do many contemporary evangelicals. Much of the time Bell isn’t trying to communicate a particular abstract theology to people. Rather, he elicits desirable emotive states from his audience and connects those with a heavily chamfered theology while tying undesirable emotive states to opposing viewpoints. All of this can be done without actually presenting a carefully reasoned and developed argument for one’s own position, or engaging closely with opposing viewpoints...</p>

<p>The advertiser does not make lengthy and involved arguments and those who are raised on advertising can seldom handle them.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>If you listen for it, you’ll hear it—people using words as ideological tools to <a href="https://www.str.org/blog/inclusive-safe-and-welcoming-to-all#.W6mHVRNKijQ" target="_blank">paint emotional images</a> rather than to communicate objective truth, choosing those words according to their emotional connotations rather than their accurate representation of reality (e.g., try reading, not watching, recent political speeches). Roberts’s explanation for this is the key point of his post:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[T]he overwhelming majority of people today were trained in the process of making up their minds by advertisers. They also picked up the art of persuasion, not from classic texts of reason, but from advertising. As a result, many people fail to demonstrate genuine literacy in understanding and creating reasoned arguments, but are adept at producing advertising copy for their impressions. They have been taught both to process and to persuade using impressions.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>So what does this mean for us? If this is how people are communicating, should we change our style to match theirs? I agree with Roberts that the answer is no:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>While recognizing the power and potential uses of advertising, we need to develop a deeper understanding of the ways that it works and the manner in which it can distort our thought and discourse. As Christians, maintaining the integrity of our discourse is one of our primary duties. This duty does not merely demand an attention to the <em>content</em> of our discourse, but also to the weaknesses, temptations, and inclinations of our chosen <em>forms</em>. Is the fragmented, vague, and emotionally-oriented and disorienting discourse of advertising, with its dense maze of interlocking narratives, questions, anecdotes, quotations, images, metaphors, and suggestions, the most faithful means of communication? I don’t think that it usually is.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read the rest of <a href="http://alastairadversaria.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/rob-bell-and-don-draper-the-ad-mans-gospel/" target="_blank">his post</a>.</p>

<p>(HT: <a href="http://www.challies.com/a-la-carte/weekend-a-la-carte-april-26" target="_blank">Tim Challies</a>)</p>
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title: Copernicus and the Scientific Revolution
topic: Science
author: Melinda Penner
date: 05/01/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/copernicus-and-the-scientific-revolution
content:
            <div> 
		<p>It’s funny that many secularists believe that Christian myths about Jesus evolved over time until they were written down generations later. This is the thesis in Bart Ehrman’s latest book. It’s not accurate. It’s funny because there are things believed by some of the same secularists that actually are myths that evolved over time to create the impression that Christianity is a science stopper and anti-intellectual. One of these myths is about the scientific revolution that was purportedly initiated by Copernicus and the supposed subsequent opposition from the church to his heliocentric theories.</p>

<p>The myth begins with the notion of the “dark ages,”&nbsp;a time when the church suppressed education. It’s just not true. Scholarship was alive and well prior to Copernicus. In fact, scholars were working on heliocentric theories before Copernicus. He learned these in university and built on them when he published in final work. His theory didn’t emerge from a dark vacuum, but from rich science that had been nurtured in the universities, many of them established by the church.</p>

<p>In fact, Copernicus himself was a canon of the church, raised and guided by his uncle who was the bishop of Warmia. Many of the scientists involved in the scientific revolution were Christians. <a href="http://www.pearceyreport.com/archives/2005/09/post_4.php" target="_blank">Nancy Pearcey</a> shares this from Rodney Stark’s research:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Sociologist of religion Rodney Stark identified the 52 figures who made the most significant contributions to the scientific revolution, then researched biographical sources to discover their religious views. He found that among the top contributors to science, surprisingly only two were skeptics (Paracelsus and Edmund Halley).</p>

<p>Stark then subdivided his subjects once again into those who were “conventional”&nbsp;in their religious views (that is, their writings exhibit the conventional religious views of the time), and those who were “devout”&nbsp;(their writings express a strong personal investment). The resulting numbers show that more than 60 percent of those who jumpstarted the scientific revolution were religiously “devout.”&nbsp;Clearly, holding a Christian worldview posed no barrier to doing excellent scientific work, and even seems to have provided a positive inspiration.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The idea that the church opposed Copernicus’&nbsp;ideas and persecuted those who taught his ideas is a useful myth built on a kernel of fact. Some Christians did disagree with the idea that the earth was not the center of the universe because they thought it contradicted what the Bible taught. But this was not a widespread response, and many dropped their opposition when they looked at it more closely. In fact, Copernicus’&nbsp;theory was taught in Christian institutions early on. <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/" target="_blank">The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a> reports:</p>

<ul>
	<li>Though Martin Luther initially rejected Copernican cosmology, Philip Melanchthon, who collaborated with Luther and was an intellectual leader of the Reformation, had it taught at the University of Wittenberg, which eventually became a center for study on Copernicus’&nbsp;ideas.</li>
	<li>Christoph Clavius, a Jesuit and leading astronomer who helped develop the Gregorian calendar, taught Copernican mathematical models early on.</li>
	<li>Pope Clement VII reacted positively to a talk he heard about Copernican theories.</li>
	<li>Pope Paul III never indicated his response and the church had no official position in 1600. It’s often assumed that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600 because he had adopted Copernican cosmology, but he was actually condemned for other issues.</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/blog/kepler-and-the-scientific-revolution#.U1fz3V5mt-4" target="_blank">Johannes Kepler</a>, a committed Christian, wrote the first openly heliocentric book after Copernicus and built on his work to develop a more accurate model of the solar system.</li>
</ul>
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title: Five Misconceptions about Holy Week
topic: History
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 04/17/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/five-misconceptions-about-holy-week
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Andreas Köstenberger and Justin Taylor wrote about “<a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/april-web-only/five-errors-to-drop-from-your-easter-sermon.html?paging=off" target="_blank">Five Errors to Drop from Your Easter Sermon</a>”&nbsp;in Christianity Today. Here’s a quick summary:</p>

<p>1. <strong>Don’t say Jesus died when he was 33 years old</strong>: “Jesus would have been 37 or 38 years old when he died in the spring of A.D. 33.”</p>

<p>2. <strong>Don’t explain the apparent absence of a lamb at the Last Supper by only saying Jesus is the ultimate Passover Lamb</strong>: “Even if it isn’t specifically mentioned in the Gospel accounts, eating the paschal lamb was an important part of every Jewish Passover.”</p>

<p>3. <strong>Don’t say the same crowds worshiped Jesus on Palm Sunday and then cried out for his crucifixion on Good Friday</strong>: “First, it is not entirely clear that the ’Hosanna!’&nbsp;crowd acclaiming Jesus’&nbsp;triumphal entry is the same group of people as the ’Crucify him!’&nbsp;crowd gathered before Pontius Pilate... Second, both crowds are expressing passion based on misunderstanding.”</p>

<p>4. <strong>Don’t bypass the role of the women as witnesses of the resurrected Christ</strong>: “First, it is a theological reminder that the kingdom of the Messiah turns the system of the world on its head... Second, it is a powerful apologetic reminder of the historical accuracy of the resurrection accounts.”</p>

<p>5. <strong>Don’t focus on the suffering of Jesus to the extent that you neglect the glory of the Cross in and through the Resurrection</strong>: “It is, as the writer of Hebrews put it, ’for the <em>joy</em> that was set before him’&nbsp;that Jesus ’endured the cross, despising the shame’&nbsp;(12:2)... Jesus’&nbsp;earthly work is indeed ’finished’&nbsp;(John 19:30), but his glorious work of ruling, reigning, and interceding continues to this day.”</p>

<p>Read the details for each point in their <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/april-web-only/five-errors-to-drop-from-your-easter-sermon.html?paging=off" target="_blank">article</a>. And for more on #5, see “<a href="https://www.str.org/blog/what-does-christ-s-resurrection-mean-for-us#.W6mJOhNKijQ" target="_blank">What Does Christ’s Resurrection Mean for Us?</a>”: “Only Christ’s death could serve as our needed sacrifice, but only Christ’s resurrection could make Him our living priest.”</p>
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title: Christians Who Made a Difference
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 03/27/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/christians-who-made-a-difference
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Arthur Guinness founded the Guinness Brewing Co. in 1755. He learned the art of brewing from his father and succeeded in establising a flourishing company. Arthur, a committed Christian, used his influence and wealth to help others.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>In 1759, Arthur moved to Dublin. There he found an abandoned brewery at St. James’&nbsp;Gate, for rent for £100 down and £45 per year. Arthur somehow managed to get the owner to agree to a lease for up to 9,000 years on these terms, and so Arthur opened his new brewery in Dublin.</p>

<p>Arthur was a very dedicated member of the Church of Ireland. In Dublin, he attended a church in which John Wesley preached, and Wesley’s ideas about hard work, the goodness and responsibilities of wealth, and the importance of caring for the poor had a powerful impact on Arthur’s faith.</p>

<p>As a result, Arthur became involved in a variety of social welfare organizations. He was on the board and became governor of Meath hospital and was dedicated to ensuring that it provided care for the poor. He also gave to a number of charities, promoted Gaelic arts to encourage pride in the Irish heritage, and joined the Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick, an organization dedicated to ending the practice of dueling.</p>

<p>He was also a champion of the Sunday School movement in Ireland, which provided basic education to children. For Arthur, this was part of an interest in prison reform: he believed that education combined with Biblical teaching would keep people from falling into a life of crime.</p>

<p>Even though a dedicated Protestant in a community that looked down at Roman Catholics, Guinness advocated for the rights of Catholics and treated them well at his brewery. This may have cost him business, but he believed it was the right thing to do.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Arthur Guinness’s commitment to helping others carried on through his descendant and company. <a href="http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/call-response/21381-christians-who-changed-their-world" target="_blank">Read more about it.</a></p>
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title: Inclusive, Safe, and Welcoming to All?
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 04/04/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/inclusive-safe-and-welcoming-to-all-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>What can one say when the new CEO of Mozilla is <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Business/mozilla-ceo-resigns-calif-gay-marriage-ban-campaign/story?id=23181711" target="_blank">drummed out of his job</a> by Mozilla’s “community”&nbsp;for being a <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/04/03/the-hounding-of-brendan-eich/" target="_blank">heretic</a> when it’s discovered he gave $1,000 to the Prop 8 campaign?</p>

<p>Mozilla said <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/" target="_blank">this</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.mozilla.org/mission/" target="_blank">Mozilla</a> prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.</p>

<p>We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.</p>

<p>Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He’s made this decision for Mozilla and our community.</p>

<p>Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.</p>

<p>Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.</p>

<p>We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>And GLAAD said <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-resigns-as-mozilla-ceo-following-criticism-of-his-support-for-prop-8/" target="_blank">this</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Mozilla’s strong statement in favor of equality today reflects where corporate America is: inclusive, safe, and welcoming to all.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The reason why their statements are so darkly and ironically amusing is that they reveal just how much language has been misused in the interest of PC enforcement (and by “PC,”&nbsp;let’s be honest—for the most part we’re talking about a set of political positions on one side only). “Inclusive, safe, and welcoming to all”&nbsp;means something in PC language that is none of those things, as this situation has made perfectly clear.</p>

<p>“Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.”&nbsp;I can understand Mozilla having trouble finding a way to make all their values, as they’ve stated them in the past, fit together. That’s what happens when you use words to promote yourself that don’t represent your actual values.</p>

<p>It’s hard for Mozilla’s community, because they like speech that supports their political views, and they like including people who agree with them, but they also like the way the nice words “free speech”&nbsp;and “inclusive”&nbsp;make people feel, so they like using those words to describe themselves. If they have to redefine the words to mean allowing, supporting, and including only <em>particular</em> political views, so what? Since they’re the good people, they get to use the beautiful words to describe themselves, whether the literal meanings of those terms apply or not.</p>

<p>This is simply the misuse of pretty words to shame people into joining their side.</p>

<p>If there’s one thing we ought to demand from Mozilla and GLAAD in this situation, it’s this: stop misusing language to make your views sound nice. If you want your company to stand for certain ideas, that’s perfectly fine; just use words in a meaningful fashion to express the actual ideas you stand for. Be honest about your values: the views you’re for and the views you reject, the people you’ll tolerate and the people you’ll require to <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/03/28/brendan-eich-mozilla-ceo-proposition-8#awesm=~oAqjbQF0B2Qrdy" target="_blank">fully recant</a> their <a href="https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/" target="_blank">views</a> or face the consequences.</p>

<p>But let’s have no more of this “inclusive,��&nbsp;“<a href="http://www.str.org/w/the-intolerance-of-tolerance" target="_blank">tolerant</a>,”&nbsp;“welcoming”&nbsp;nonsense.</p>
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title: What Our Reaction to the Noah Movie Says about Evangelicals
topic: Christian Living
author: Brett Kunkle
date: 04/14/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-our-reaction-to-the-noah-movie-says-about-evangelicals
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Hey, did you hear anything about that recent Noah movie?</p>

<p>Ha! Of course you did and are now probably suffering from NMF (Noah-Movie Fatigue). Wow, evangelicals had a lot to say about the movie. To characterize the evangelical reaction as diverse would be a huge understatement. There was Gregory Thornbury’s <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2014/03/26/darren-aronofksys-noah/" target="_blank">more positive take</a> on the Noah movie, to Brian Mattson’s <a href="http://drbrianmattson.com/journal/2014/3/31/sympathy-for-the-devil" target="_blank">argument</a> that it’s a thoroughly Gnostic retelling of the Noah narrative, to Peter Chattaway’s response that “<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2014/04/no-noah-is-not-gnostic-say-that-ten-times-fast.html" target="_blank">No, Noah is not Gnostic</a>,”&nbsp;to R.J. Moeller’s creative <a href="http://acculturated.com/requiem-for-an-ark-an-open-letter-to-darren-aronofsky/" target="_blank">open letter to Darren Aronofsky</a>, to Joe Carter’s <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2014/03/29/the-repristinator-a-review-of-noah/" target="_blank">unimpressed review</a> of Aronofsky’s “mediocre midrash,”&nbsp;to Barbara Nicolosi’s <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/churchofthemasses/2014/03/the-utter-embarrassing-mess-of-noah-and-why-everybody-is-lying-about-it/" target="_blank">MMA takedown</a> of all things Noah. Evangelicals certainly had a lot to say.</p>

<p>So last week, in response to all the Noah noise, Roberto Rivera over at Breakpoint asked, <a href="http://www.breakpoint.org/features-columns/breakpoint-columns/entry/2/24932" target="_blank">“Why are Christians fighting so hard about Noah?”</a>&nbsp;His answer:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>“Missing in all of this is any consideration about why Christians should be so <em>invested</em> in what comes out of Hollywood. Maybe it’s age or depression, but I think that part of being part of the peculiar people is not looking to Hollywood for validation... In our desperate desire to seem ’relevant,’&nbsp;Christians are clamoring to join this vacuous conversation. We are sold to Hollywood as a great untapped market that Hollywood can’t afford to ignore... Now, I like watching movies at home, although not as much as I used to. But in looking to join the conversation, we are unwittingly accepting the premise that the ’Life Questions’&nbsp;can be answered by reference to what’s onscreen. They can’t.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Sorry, but I think this is a pretty uncharitable take on the Christian response. Yes, there are corners of the evangelical world looking to Hollywood (and acadeimia and politics and the media, etc., etc.) for validation, but I don’t think that impulse characterizes the larger movement, and certainly one example like this cannot establish such a claim. Does any Christian really think the big questinos of life will be “answered”&nbsp;onscreen? And does joining the conversation about what Hollywood produces entail that we do “unwittingly”&nbsp;think such a thing? No and no.</p>

<p>Let me suggest a different explanation for why Christians made so much noise surrounding the Noah movie: we care about ideas. We understand that ideas have consequences. And we care. Notice the kind of response evangelicals gave. For the most part, they were thoughtful reviews (whether you agreed or disagreed with the conclusions), engaging the intellectual content of the movie. Generally, there were <em>not</em> simplistic dismissals or calls for a Hollywood boycott.</p>

<p>We understand that the ideas that come to dominate our culture will have a huge impact over time. We understand that what J. Gresham Machen said almost a hundred years ago is true today:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>“False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of a nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>And we understand that a prominent tool to diseeminate ideas in our culture is the screen. Movies, TV shows, YouTube and Vimeo videos, and other visual media are tools that can, over time, take our minds captive by false ideas (Colossians 2:8). So we care. We realize it’s important to engage those ideas, wrestle with them, debate them, and ultimately equip the Body of Christ to see everything in the light of God’s truth.</p>

<p>You know what would’ve been much more concerning to me? Apathy. If Christians just yawned and said, “Whatever.”&nbsp;“Who cares?”&nbsp;That would’ve been a much greater cause for concern. So I’m glad Christians made some noise about the Noah movie. I’ll take passionate engagement over apathy any day.</p>
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title: Do You Take the Bible Literally?
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/25/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/do-you-take-the-bible-literally-2
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>When a writer seems to be communicating facts in a straightforward way, I read them as such. When I encounter obvious figures of speech, I take them that way, too.</em></p>

<p>I never liked the question, “Do you take the Bible literally?”&nbsp;It comes up with some frequency, and it deserves an answer. But I think it’s confusing, ambiguous, and awkward to answer.</p>

<p>Clearly, even those with a high view of Scripture don’t take everything literally. Jesus is the “door,”&nbsp;but He’s not made of wood. We are the “branches,”&nbsp;but we’re not sprouting leaves.</p>

<p>On the other hand, we do take seriously content others find fanciful and far-fetched: loaves and fishes multiplying miraculously, Adam and Eve, Jonah and the big fish, water walking, resurrections, etc.</p>

<p>A short “yes”&nbsp;or “no”&nbsp;in response to the “Do you take the Bible literally?”&nbsp;question, then, would not be helpful. Neither answer gives the right impression.</p>

<p>I’d like to suggest an alternative response that might result in a productive conversation. Here it is: “I take the Bible in its ordinary sense.”</p>

<p>Now, I realize this response is also ambiguous. Here I think it’s a strength, though. Hopefully, your answer will prompt a request for clarification. This is exactly what you want, as long as you are clear in your own mind on what you mean.</p>

<p>I would clarify what I have in mind by countering with another question. When someone asks for an explanation of my comment, I’d ask, “Do you read the sports page literally?”</p>

<p>I think this question would give anyone pause. Once again, certain factual information is part of every story in the section. On the other hand, no one would be tempted to think that a football team was literally “crushed,”&nbsp;“mangled,”&nbsp;“mutilated,”&nbsp;“pounded,”&nbsp;“stomped,”&nbsp;“shredded,”&nbsp;or “devoured.”</p>

<p>“Literally?”&nbsp;they’d probably respond. “That depends. If the writer seems to be stating a fact—like a score, a location, a player’s name, a description of the plays leading to a touchdown—then I’d take that as fact. If he seems to be using a figure of speech, then I’d take his statements that way.”</p>

<p>This would be a fair way of reading the sports page. It’s also a fair way of reading the Bible and is exactly what I mean when I say, “I take the Bible in its ordinary sense.”&nbsp;When a writer seems to be communicating facts in a straightforward way, I read them as such. When I encounter obvious figures of speech, I take them that way, too.</p>

<p>Even then, though, the purpose of figurative speech—in prose at least—is always to communicate literal truth in a more precise and powerful way than ordinary language would be able to.</p>

<p>Figurative speech is always meant to clarify, not obscure. So, even if you don’t take a phrase “literally,”&nbsp;some literal point is still being made. In that case, it’s always fair to ask what specifically the writer is trying to communicate with his colorful language.</p>

<p>This is the same way we read just about everything. I don’t see any reason the Bible should be different. In fact, even non-Christians read the Bible that way (no one doubts we should take statements like “Love your neighbor”&nbsp;or “Give to the poor”&nbsp;literally), with one exception.</p>

<p>People only balk when they come across controversial claims, something in the Bible that is inconsistent with their own theological or moral fancies. Then, suddenly, they become skeptics and sniff, “You don’t take that literally, do you?”&nbsp;What they really mean is, “You don’t take that seriously, do you?”</p>

<p>When that happens, tell them you take the words in their ordinary sense, the way it seems the author intended you to take them as you read the passage. If they disagree, ask for the reasons they think this passage should be an exception to an otherwise sound rule.</p>

<p>Their answer will tell you if their challenge is intellectually honest, or if they are just trying to dismiss biblical claims they simply don’t like.</p>

<p>I hope this letter gives you a meaningful response to a common challenge that could lead to a productive conversation. We’re also facing a common challenge right now at Stand to Reason.</p>

<p>Financial giving in the first few months after Christmas always starts slow for us, and we plan for that.</p>

<p>In April, we would really like to make up some of the lost ground and get back on track. Could I ask you to be especially generous in your support in the upcoming month, both financially and with prayer? Your gift today will help us reverse the present trend.</p>

<p>I look forward to our continued partnership this year, and to sharing with you the productivity and impact God is giving us every day at STR, equipping and training ambassadors of Christ.</p>

<p>In His care,</p>

<p>Gregory Koukl</p>
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title: Agreement with Ehrman
topic: History
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 04/01/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/agreement-with-ehrman
content:
            <div> 
		<p>In Rob Bowman’s <a href="http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2014/03/how-jesus-became-god-or-how-god-became-jesus-a-review-of-bart-ehrmans-new-book-and-a-concurrent-response/" target="_blank">review</a> of Bart Ehrman’s new book, <em>How Jesus Became God</em>, he enumerates the many points of agreement evangelicals have with Ehrman:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I think evangelicals should be quick to acknowledge and even capitalize on a large number of agreements that they can have with Ehrman about Jesus and Christology. These include but are not limited to the following facts:</p>

<ul>
	<li>Jesus was a real historical person, a Galilean Jew who preached the kingdom of God. Ehrman has devoted a whole book to defending this fact.</li>
	<li>The canonical Gospels are the earliest and, for all practical purposes, the only valuable sources of detailed information about the historical Jesus. The “Gnostic”&nbsp;gospels and other apocryphal writings date from much later and are not significant sources of historical information about Jesus.</li>
	<li>Jesus thought he was, or at least would become, the Messiah.</li>
	<li>Jesus was crucified at the order of Pontius Pilate.</li>
	<li>Jesus actually died on the cross.</li>
	<li>Some of Jesus’&nbsp;original followers sincerely believed they saw Jesus alive from the dead.</li>
</ul>

<p>(Already, we’ve eliminated about 90 percent of the nonsense we so often hear from skeptics about Jesus! And we’re not done.)</p>

<ul>
	<li>The belief that Jesus rose from the dead convinced Jesus’&nbsp;disciples, practically immediately, that he was a divine figure, exalted to the right hand of God. The very earliest Christians thus made some astounding claims about Jesus.</li>
	<li>The belief that Jesus was a divine figure who existed before his human life was accepted by at least some Christians within twenty years of Jesus’&nbsp;death, even before Paul’s earliest epistles. (Say good-bye to the baloney about Paul radically changing Christianity from Jesus’&nbsp;Jewish moral code to a Hellenized savior cult.)</li>
	<li><a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Philippians%202.6-11" target="_blank" title="Philippians 2:6-11">Philippians 2:6-11</a> teaches that Jesus Christ was a preexistent divine figure who became a human being; Ehrman rejects the “Adamic”&nbsp;interpretation of the passage that tries to circumvent the preexistence of Christ.</li>
	<li>Paul calls Jesus “God”&nbsp;in <a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Romans%209.5" target="_blank" title="Romans 9:5">Romans 9:5</a>!</li>
	<li>John clearly teaches that Jesus existed before creation in some way distinct from God the Father, yet he was “God”&nbsp;and was equal to God. (Jehovah’s Witnesses, take note.) Furthermore, John did not originate this view, because the Johannine Prologue derives from a pre-Johannine source.</li>
</ul>

<p>One could hardly wish for more agreements and even concessions from the world’s most influential agnostic biblical scholar.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>With all these points of agreement between us, why does Ehrman end up with such a different view of Christianity? I think Ed Komoszewski pinpointed the root difference between Ehrman and Evangelicals in his <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2011/11/can-we-trust-the-text-of-the-new-testament.html" target="_blank">review of the 2011 debate</a> between Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Wallace painted Ehrman as a radical skeptic. Is that picture true to form? One person from the audience asked Ehrman what it would take for him to be sure that we knew what the original of, say, the Gospel of Mark was. He said if we had ten first-generation copies, written within a week or so of the original, with “0.001% deviation”&nbsp;between them, then he could be relatively assured that we had Mark’s Gospel intact. Forget the fact that such requirements are not made for any other ancient literature, or that the New Testament is so rich in copies that scholars can get a very good sense of the original wording. Ehrman’s response to this question confirmed that Wallace had indeed framed things accurately.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>See why Michael Kruger thinks this kind of skepticism is <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2013/05/15/the-difference-between-original-autographs-and-original-texts/" target="_blank">unreasonable</a>, and read the rest of Rob Bowman’s extensive <a href="http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2014/03/how-jesus-became-god-or-how-god-became-jesus-a-review-of-bart-ehrmans-new-book-and-a-concurrent-response/" target="_blank">review</a>.</p>
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title: It’s About the Difference between Men and Women
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 04/09/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/it-s-about-the-difference-between-men-and-women
content:
            <div> 
		<p>In a recent Twitter conversation, I was told that opposing same-sex marriage is, by definition, <a href="https://twitter.com/godsarefalse/status/452846841457938434" target="_blank">bigotry</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[Y]ou are bigoted on this issue; of that I am sure. You might not be a bigot in any other part of ur life but on this you are.</p>

<p>I’m sure because you spell it out when you fight against equal rights for gays. Your fight makes me sure.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Leaving aside the arguments for why this issue is <a href="/w/it-s-not-about-equality" target="_blank">not about equal rights</a>, this is what I wish our opponents would grasp: Our objection to same-sex marriage is not about a difference between homosexuals and heterosexuals. If we were saying that homosexuals were lesser people unworthy of rights, then one might have an argument for this being an example of bigotry. But the case we’re making isn’t about a difference between homosexuals and heterosexuals (it’s not even about whether or not homosexuality is morally wrong); it’s about the difference between <em>men</em> and <em>women</em>.</p>

<p>Mollie Hemingway’s piece in <em>The Federalist</em> on “<a href="http://thefederalist.com/2014/04/08/the-rise-of-the-same-sex-marriage-dissidents/" target="_blank">The Rise of the Same-Sex Marriage Dissidents</a>”&nbsp;(written in response to the <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2014/04/inclusive-safe-and-welcoming-to-all.html" target="_blank">Mozilla situation</a>) touches on this:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>We...have a system that is demanding conformity, uniformity and discipline—it’s not just about marriage law, to be honest. It’s really about something much bigger—crushing the belief that the sexes are distinct in deep and meaningful ways that contribute to human flourishing. Obviously marriage law plays a role here—recent court rulings have asserted that the sexes are interchangeable when it comes to marriage. That’s only possible if they’re not distinct in deep and meaningful ways. But the push to change marriage laws is just one part of a larger project to change our understanding of sexual distinctions. See, for example, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/02/13/facebook-will-now-allow-users-to-identify-as-trans-bi-androgynous-or-any-other-gender-they-want/" target="_blank">the 50 genders of Facebook</a>...</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The drive to redefine marriage depends on denying the <a href="http://www.michiganfamily.org/index.php/what-every-child-needs/" target="_blank">differences</a> between the <a href="/w/fathers-don-t-mother" target="_blank">sexes</a>, and yet these are the very differences that brought about the need for marriage in the first place:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[T]here’s precisely one bodily system for which each of us only has half of the system. It’s the one that involves sex between one man and one woman. It’s with respect to that system that the unit is the mated pair. In that system, it’s not just a relationship that is the union of minds, wills or important friendships. It’s the literal union of bodies. In sexual congress, in intercourse between a man and a woman, you are literally coordinated to a single bodily end.</p>

<p>In every other respect we as humans act as individual organisms except when it comes to intercourse between men and women—then we work together as one flesh. Coordination toward that end—even when procreation is not achieved—makes the unity here. This is what marriage law was about. Not two friends building a house together. Or two people doing other sexual activities together. It was about the sexual union of men and women and a refusal to lie about what that union and that union alone produces: the propagation of humanity. This is the only way to make sense of marriage laws throughout all time and human history. Believing in this truth is not something that is wrong, and should be a firing offense. It’s not something that’s wrong, but should be protected speech. It’s actually something that’s right. It’s right regardless of how many people say otherwise. If you doubt the truth of this reality, consider your own existence, which we know is due to one man and one woman getting together. Consider the significance of what this means for all of humanity, that we all share this.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>It’s not unreasonable or bigoted to treat the unique joining of sexually complementary partners uniquely. But in order to see that this is a reasonable understanding that isn’t motivated by hate, one must first acknowledge the differences between women and men. Conversely, in order to <em>hide</em> its reasonableness, one must first erase those differences in people’s minds. Watch for this happening (e.g., with Facebook, see above), and make the connection.</p>

<p>I would say that perhaps we need to start our arguments farther back in the chain of reasoning, at the point our culture used to take for granted—the objective, unchanged-by-wishful-thinking differences between the sexes, but I actually don’t think that’s far back enough.</p>

<p>No, this goes back farther than that, for the questions involved here (whether gender is assigned or a matter of choice, whether there’s such a thing as male nature and female nature, whether an institution like marriage is something we recognize or create, whether the good of society lies in conforming itself to a predetermined purpose or a new vision, whether human nature is something in particular or a sea of possibilities bound only by what we can imagine for ourselves) all depend on whether we are here because of God or because of chance. In the end, it comes back to the most basic of all worldview differences: theism vs. non-theism.</p>

<p>So in a way, the people who accuse us of basing our position on religion are right, though it’s not in the way they think. That is, we’re against redefining marriage not mainly because we think homosexual behavior is wrong, but because we think human nature (including each person’s gender and the way that relates to marriage) is something fixed that we were given, not something endlessly changing and malleable that we can create for ourselves. (Not that one needs to believe in God to observe that human nature is unchanging. History is on our side on this one.)</p>

<p>Since we don’t think we have the power to defy reality and mold ourselves and natural institutions like the family into something radically new, we therefore conclude that attempts to force such a change will lead to suffering throughout our society.</p>

<p>That has nothing to do with bigotry.</p>
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title: Restoring People: The Leprosy Doctor
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 04/10/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/restoring-people-the-leprosy-doctor
content:
            <div> 
		<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wilson_Brand" target="_blank">Paul Brand</a> was born to missionary parents in India. He became a surgeon in England and returned to India to care for leprosy patients. Dr. Brand’s insight was that the damage to patients’&nbsp;limbs was not due to the disease, but injury that they never felt because the disease dulled their nerves. He established the New Life Center in India, which was a village setting for leprosy patients. “This [kind of residential setting] helped dispel the stigma that was so prevalent even among medical professionals. Correcting deformities to restore the self-respect of patients and to integrate them into society was his cherished goal.”</p>

<blockquote>
<p>In 1966, after 19 years of service in India, he moved to the U.S.A. on invitation to take up the position of Chief of Rehabilitation Branch at the National Hensen’s Disease Center at Carville, Louisiana. He worked there for 20 years and established a well-equipped and well-staffed research unit to study the complications of insensitive hands and feet, their prevention and management. His methods for prevention and management of plantar ulcers are now extensively used for treatment of patients with diabetes melitus who have similar problems. Brand also popularized the technique of serial casting for the finger deformities that often result from Hansen’s disease, a technique that is now widely used by hand therapists to treat contractures from many different hand injuries and conditions.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Dr. Brand’s experience treating patients with severe injuries led to his view that pain was actually a valuable feature because when it functions properly, it protects us from more severe injuries. He wrote about this with Phillip Yancey in <em>Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants.</em>&nbsp;“The book contains a foreword by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who said that if he could have chosen to be anyone else besides himself, he would have chosen to be Dr. Paul Brand.”</p>
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title: Why Do Christians Care about World Vision’s Marriage Policy?
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/29/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/why-do-christians-care-about-world-vision-s-marriage-policy-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>At Stand to Reason, we usually focus on the publicly accessible, <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/03/marriage-what-it-is-why-it-matters-and-the-consequences-of-redefining-it" target="_blank">non-religious reasons</a> to oppose changing the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Marriage-Woman-Defense/dp/1594036225" target="_blank">definition of marriage</a>, as there’s no need to appeal to the Bible in order to make a good case. But the question “Why do Christians care how an organization that self-identifies as Christian views marriage?”&nbsp;and “Is this something worth dividing over?”&nbsp;requires an answer from within Christian doctrine.</p>

<p>In a post titled “<a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2014/03/27/why-is-this-issue-different/" target="_blank">Why Is This Issue Different?</a>”&nbsp;Kevin DeYoung gives four reasons why a disagreement between self-professed Christians on this issue is different from a disagreement on a theological issue such as the mode of baptism. Here’s one of those reasons:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Homosexual behavior is so repeatedly and clearly forbidden in Scripture that to encourage homosexuality calls into question the role of Scripture in the life of the denomination that accepts such blatantly unbiblical teaching. The order of creation informs us that God's plan for sexuality is one woman and one man (Genesis 2). This order is reaffirmed by Jesus (Matthew 19) and Paul (Ephesians 5). The Old Testament law forbade homosexual behavior (Leviticus 18, 20). Paul reiterates this prohibition by using the same Greek construction in 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1. Paul condemns same sex behavior (among many other sins) in Romans 1. Jude in his epistle links sexual immorality and the “unnatural desire”&nbsp;present in Sodom and Gomorrah.</p>

<p>The evidence is so overwhelming that Luke Timothy Johnson, New Testament scholar and advocate of legitimizing homosexual behavior,<a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/homosexuality-church-1" target="_blank"> argues rather candidly:</a>&nbsp;“I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us.”&nbsp;At its root, support for homosexual behavior is not simply a different interpretation of Scripture; it is a rejection of Scripture itself.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>There are certainly some today who argue that the Bible does <em>not</em> prohibit homosexual activity between committed partners. For a response to their arguments, I recommend a refutation from James White, which can be found <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2013/11/a-response-to-matthew-vines-the-bible-doesnt-support-same-sex-relationships.html" target="_blank">here</a> (along with more links you may find helpful).</p>

<p>DeYoung concludes:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Of course, homosexuality isn’t the only sin in the world. But I know of no Christian leader or Christian community promoting theft or championing idolatry as a special blessing from God. It is not an overstatement to say solemnizing same-sex intercourse is in danger of leading people to hell. The same is not true when it comes to sorting out the millennium. In tolerating the doctrine which affirms homosexual behavior, we are tolerating a doctrine which leads people farther from God, not closer. This is not the mission Jesus gave us when he told us to teach the nations all that he has commanded.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read his other <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2014/03/27/why-is-this-issue-different/" target="_blank">three points</a> and more about World Vision’s policy change and <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/march-web-only/world-vision-reverses-decision-gay-same-sex-marriage.html?start=1&amp;paging=off" target="_blank">reversal</a>. And I don’t like to discuss this topic without also mentioning Wesley Hill’s book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Washed-Waiting-Reflections-Faithfulness-Homosexuality/dp/0310330033" target="_blank"><em>Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality</em></a>. If you don’t have compassion for our Christian brothers and sisters who have same-sex attractions and have chosen to follow Christ rather than fulfill this desire, then I recommend reading this book.</p>
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title: The Angel of Prisons
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 04/03/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-angel-of-prisons
content:
            <div> 
		<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Fry" target="_blank">Elizabeth Fry</a> was a British Quaker Christian who led the movement for prison reform in the 19th century. She was also the driving force behind reform legislation.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>At the age of 18, young Elizabeth was deeply moved by the preaching of William Savery, an American Quaker. Motivated by his words, she took an interest in the poor, the sick, and the prisoners. She collected old clothes for the poor, visited those who were sick in her neighbourhood, and started a Sunday school in the summer house to teach children to read...</p>

<p>Prompted by a family friend, Stephen Grellet, Fry visited Newgate prison. The conditions she saw there horrified her. The women’s section was overcrowded with women and children, some of whom had not even received a trial. They did their own cooking and washing in the small cells in which they slept on straw. Elizabeth Fry wrote in the book Prisons in Scotland and the North of England that she actually stayed the nights in some of the prisons and invited nobility to come and stay and see for themselves the conditions prisoners lived in. Her kindness helped her gain the friendship of the prisoners and they began to try to improve their conditions for themselves...</p>

<p>In 1817 she helped found the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate. This led to the eventual creation of the British Ladies’&nbsp;Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners, widely described by biographers and historians as constituting the first “nationwide”&nbsp;women’s organisation in Britain...</p>

<p>Elizabeth Fry also helped the homeless, establishing a “nightly shelter”&nbsp;in London after seeing the body of a young boy in the winter of 1819/1820. In 1824, during a visit to Brighton, she instituted the Brighton District Visiting Society. The society arranged for volunteers to visit the homes of the poor and provide help and comfort to them. The plan was successful and was duplicated in other districts and towns across Britain...</p>

<p>In 1840 Fry opened a training school for nurses. Her programme inspired Florence Nightingale, who took a team of Fry’s nurses to assist wounded soldiers in the Crimean War.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>After her death, memorials and a home were established in her name to care for prisoners and the poor. Since 2001, her picture appears on the £5 note.</p>
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title: Bart Ehrman’s Latest Book: How Jesus Became God
topic: Theology
author: Melinda Penner
date: 04/21/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/bart-ehrman-s-latest-book-how-jesus-became-god
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I realized something about Bart Ehrman’s books reading his latest, <em>How Jesus Became God</em>. Most of his books are the same premise applied to different topics. Ehrman’s fundamental premise is that the New Testament documents, and most critically the Gospels, were written late, long after the eyewitnesses were gone. He thinks that they record oral tradition that changed over time before being committed to writing. So we have no authoritative or reliable record of Jesus. He touches on the reasoning for this briefly in this book, but he’s dealt with this in more depth in earlier books. But it really is the most important thing to know about this book and most of his books in the last several years. So if you want to understand Ehrman’s view about Jesus’&nbsp;divinity in this book, you need to go back and understand his thinking on the New Testament in <em>Misquoting Jesus</em>.</p>

<p>The power of his case for how the idea of Jesus’&nbsp;divinity evolved long after Jesus’&nbsp;life is really an argument that is just touched on in this book. The fundamental idea of this book, and really the most persuasive part of his case that Jesus never claimed to be divine, is how he dates the New Testament documents. Once you don’t think the New Testament is a reliable report of Jesus’&nbsp;teachings then any theory about how people came to think Jesus was divine is more plausible than that He actually taught that, even if it’s not very plausible in and of itself. And Ehrman’s explanation for how Jesus’&nbsp;divinity evolved is pretty implausible without his fundamental premise that the New Testament was not written by eyewitnesses. He goes into great detail and tells a good tale for how this idea could have entered Christian teaching. I can see the appeal of the case he builds if—if the New Testament wasn’t written by eyewitnesses.</p>

<p>This isn’t a detailed or point-by-point review of Ehrman’s new book. Rather, I’ll highlight some of the major things to keep in mind when considering Ehrman’s arguments in this book and most of his others.</p>

<p>Ehrman starts by pointing out that the dividing line between human and divine was not so clear in ancient times. He provides ample evidence of ancient Greek and Roman ideas of humans becoming divine, and the divine becoming human, and all along the spectrum. I think it’s fairly well known that the Greeks and Romans believed this. The key is how he was going to show first century Jews believed this, I wondered, so I started that chapter with anticipation—and was disappointed. Not disappointed that he made a good case; disappointed that it was so weak that he and others find it compelling. He cites examples of Jewish sects that believed that humans could and did become divine, and visa versa. But in every case, these were aberrant teachings held by very small groups of Jew and never were held by mainstream Judaism. And he never shows that anyone associated with Jesus or writing the New Testament believed this and how it shaped their beliefs about a man from Nazareth who never claimed to be God. He simply cites some aberrant teaching believed by some Jews at some time, and then in subsequent chapters, tells a tale of how this shaped what was taught by Jesus’&nbsp;followers about Him. There’s no reason to think (and he doesn’t give any reason to think) that this was taught by the disciples, or Paul, or anyone else associated with early Christianity. So the gap he tries to fill between who Jesus actually was and what got written in the New Testament a long time later has no facts to get from there to here.</p>

<p>This chapter on what some ancient Jews thought about divinity and humanity made me realize that I think Ehrman doesn’t think that there’s any authoritative teaching in religions—at least not Judaism or Christianity. The reason that thought occurred to me is because it’s enough for Ehrman that some Jews somewhere believed the continuum between humanity and divinity as precedent for making his case. It’s irrelevant to him that these views were rejected by Judaism and were very unlikely to affect Jesus’&nbsp;followers who were all devout Jews. He writes in this book and earlier ones what some who claimed to be Christian wrote about Jesus in gnostic writings, and he clearly thinks these have just as much claim to be “Christian teaching”&nbsp;as anything else other Christians claimed. There is no orthodox or authoritative teaching for Ehrman; there’s simply what Christians (or Jews) believed. And it was simply the usurpation of power by some Christians who claimed orthodoxy for itself. So as Ehrman cites various Jewish and Christian teachings in his book, none has any more authority than another, and much of his case consists simply of citing that some people believed things other than what the so-called orthodox believed.</p>

<p>So with the idea that the New Testament was written long after Jesus, which gave time for legend and error to slip into the stories that were told, and that ancient people and some ancient Jews believed that humans could become divine, he goes on to explain how Jesus became divine in Christian teaching. Jesus was a human like the rest of us who taught controversial things about challenging the political authorities and got killed for it. His followers were disappointed, and over time reinterpreted his teachings as claiming to be the Messiah and divine. As for the resurrection appearances, some of his followers had visions and interpreted these as resurrection appearances. And Paul really is the one responsible for developing the idea that Jesus was God, but he never knew Jesus, so he’s no authority. This is the basic explanation Ehrman gives for how Jesus became divine.</p>

<p>It’s built on late dating the New Testament documents and citing precedents of such teachings. I found it implausible and completely unpersuasive. That doesn’t mean Ehrman’s book isn’t well-written and conceivable if you accept his fundamental premises. If you get tangled in the tale, it sounds rather plausible.</p>

<p>Ehrman dismisses details of the resurrection accounts because they’re reported by only one author or because they stray from what we know to have been standard practice for crucifixions. For example, Pilate granting the Jews’&nbsp;request that the bodies be taken down by sunset, the beginning of the Sabbath. Ehrman says that this can’t be relied on since it’s unlikely a Roman official would care about the Jews’&nbsp;sensibilities about the Sabbath. But that’s hardly an argument that Pilate didn’t do it in this instance.</p>

<p>The historical critical method of dating and interpreting the Bible views unique reports and unique events as unreliable. If the texts are not eyewitness reports, and if you think they are traditions that have been handed down for generations before being written down, it seems reasonable that unique events should be treated suspiciously. Events reported in only one Gospel most likely crept in along the oral tradition route. That’s if they’re late dated. But if the Gospels are eyewitness accounts, it’s reasonable that some reports will have unique details that aren’t found in other accounts. That happens all the time when different people report something they all witnessed. It’s also true that the Gospels were written for different audiences and by different authors so they’d choose to include different information. It’s not unusual that even one individual might recount a story with slightly different details depending on who they’re talking to, because different details will interest and be familiar to different listeners. So unique events are not automatically suspect; it all depends on how you date the Gospels in the first place.</p>

<p>Ehrman makes the point more than once that historians can’t do theology. So, for instance, historians can’t conclude whether or not the Trinity is true. Fair enough. But he includes supernatural events in the theological category so that things like the resurrection can’t be determined to be historical events. But historians can consider unique events reported by eyewitnesses, and determine whether or not those eyewitnesses can be considered reliable. So it gets back to the dating of the documents again. The resurrection certainly has theological import, but it is first purportedly a historical event that witnesses claim to have seen evidence of—over 500 people, in fact. So it’s not as though these kinds of events are outside of the historians’&nbsp;reach and are therefore only matters of faith (i.e. blind faith). But it depends on whether or not we’re dealing with eyewitness accounts.</p>

<p>Much more can be said about the case Ehrman builds, but nothing else is any more persuasive than this. Much more can be said in response to many of Ehrman claims that sound plausible, and much has been written. I’ll link to some resources that go into more depth.</p>

<p>The fundamental thing is that Ehrman is wrong about dating the New Testament, and the tale he spins quite skillfully is not plausible—unless you believe, like him, that there has to be some explanation since we can’t believe the New Testament was written by eyewitnesses.</p>

<p>Two more points.</p>

<p>The strength of some of Ehrman’s points trades on equivocation and the lack of familiarity many Christians have with some technical points.</p>

<p>In building his case for how things we think are clear teachings of Jesus’&nbsp;divinity but aren’t, he goes into a lengthy demonstration of how the term “Son of Man”&nbsp;can be used in different ways that don’t connote divinity. This is true. The title “Son of Man”&nbsp;can be used in different ways in the Bible. But it seemed to me that Ehrman was trading on equivocation here for making his case. Because the term can be applied in different ways doesn’t mean when Jesus claimed this term (or those that put it in Jesus’&nbsp;mouth many decades later, according to Ehrman’s view) that He wasn’t self-consciously claiming it as a divine title. It’s a big step between showing that a term can mean various things and showing that it doesn’t mean what we think it means in application to Jesus. Ehrman also points out that Jesus uses the title in the third person so that he’s not referring to Himself. However, the context makes clear Jesus and his listeners understood he was applying the title to himself.</p>

<p>And here is something that I think has a lot of persuasive power in Ehrman’s writing. He often writes about problems and questions that are actually quite well known among scholars, pastors, and serious Bible students, but aren’t necessarily familiar to many Christians or non-Christians. For instance, much of the textual variations Ehrman has written about in previous books are known and have been known for a very long time—they’re often even noted in the margin notes in our Bibles. But he takes these variations that aren’t even problems and builds a case that the New Testament text is unreliable. If you’re not aware of how weak his starting point is, the rest seems quite compelling. He does the same thing with his chapter on the Son of Man.</p>

<p>The other point I want to bring up is the way Ehrman refers to scholars who aren’t part of his school of thought about the dating the New Testament. Throughout this book and others he often makes the point that the majority of scholars agree with his positions. He clearly means this to have persuasive power that authority and majorities often have on shaping our opinions. On occasion he refers to other scholars who believe the New Testament documents are dated early and authoritative. He doesn’t interact with their arguments; he seems only to mention them to dismiss them. The way he mentions them, he seems to imply they’re naive and haven’t caught up to modern scholarship. This isn’t true. There are plenty of well-regarded scholars who disagree with his views—including his professor and mentor Bruce Metzger. When I read these dismissive comments of Ehrman’s, I wonder if he would really say that to Metzger were he still alive.</p>

<p>Along the same line, Ehrman says more than once that his views about the New Testament are widely taught in seminaries and believed by most pastors who don’t want to rock the boat by teaching it to their congregations. He accuses the majority of pastors of dishonesty because they won’t teach what they really think is true about the Bible. I’m sure there are some pastors like that, and there’s a shred of truth to his claim, just like with the textual variations and Son of Man. The historical critical method, which approaches the Bible in a hyper-skeptical way, is taught in most seminaries. But it’s not always taught as the best way of understanding the New Testament. It’s taught because it’s important for pastors to understand how some scholars will approach the Bible. It’s studied, analyzed, and rejected on the merits. Because it’s taught in seminaries doesn’t mean it’s recommended by all those seminaries or accepted by those who are instructed. So once again, there’s a huge gulf between Ehrman’s premise and conclusion.</p>

<p>Ehrman is a scholar with good credentials who writes books that sound plausible, so it’s important to dig into the details of what he thinks about the New Testament and read the case other scholars make who disagree with him. To think that the New Testament was written by eyewitnesses shortly after Jesus’&nbsp;ministry and that he taught He was God is rational and well founded. Here are a number of important resources to make that case.</p>

<ul>
	<li>Greg’s interview with Michael Kruger on the key ideas on Ehrman’s new book (<a href="/w/michael-krueger-on-bart-ehrman-s-new-book-april-22-2014-" target="_blank">third hour of the podcast</a>)</li>
	<li>Michael Kruger’s <a href="http://www.reformation21.org/articles/how-jesus-became-god-a-review.php" target="_blank">review of Ehrman’s new book</a></li>
	<li><a href="/w/-misquoting-jesus-answering-bart-ehrman" target="_blank">Greg’s analysis</a> of Bart Ehrman’s book <em>Misquoting Jesus</em>—has the Bible been changed so that it’s unreliable?</li>
	<li>Richard Bauckham—<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802863906" target="_blank"><em>Jesus and the Eyewitnesses</em></a>—makes a strong case that the Gospels are early accounts based on eyewitness testimony</li>
	<li>Michael Krueger—<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Question-Canon-Challenging-Testament/dp/0830840311/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1398106700&amp;sr=8-1-spell&amp;keywords=te+question+of+canon" target="_blank"><em>The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate</em></a>—Krueger dismantles the view that the New Testament was a late creation based on tradition and imposed by the church to silence other traditions about Jesus</li>
	<li>Michael Krueger has an excellent <a href="http://michaeljkruger.com" target="_blank">blog where he often posts</a> on these topics.</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-God-Became-Jesus-Nature—- ebook/dp/B00I2P2OVS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1398113414&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=how+god+became+jesus" target="_blank"><em>How God Became Jesus</em></a>—a response to Ehrman’s new book by various scholars</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2014/03/how-jesus-became-god-or-how-god-became-jesus-a-review-of-bart-ehrmans-new-book-and-a-concurrent-response/" target="_blank">A Review of Bart Ehrman’s New Book by Rob Bowman</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/book-reviews/review/how_jesus_became_god" target="_blank">Andreas Köstenberger reviews Bart Ehrman’s new book</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://danielbwallace.com/2014/03/24/can-we-still-believe-the-bible/" target="_blank">Can We Still Believe the Bible?</a>—a good book review by Dan Wallace of Craig L. Blomberg’s book that touches on important points to understand about textual criticism, which is fundamental to understanding Ehrman’s view of the Bible</li>
	<li><a href="https://www.reclaimingthemind.org/members/category/credo-courses/new-testament-textual-criticism/" target="_blank">New Testament Textual Criticism</a>—course by Dan Wallace provided by Credo House (if you’re not a member, you can purchase the course <a href="http://reclaimingthemind.org/product/credo-course-new-testament-textual-criticism/" target="_blank">here</a>)</li>
</ul>
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title: Heaven Is for Real
topic: Theology
author: Melinda Penner
date: 04/15/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/heaven-is-for-real
content:
            <div> 
		<p>The movie based on the book releases this week. Since this child’s account of his near death experience is consistent with Christianity, it may be tempting for Christians to find this story encouraging. But we’ve got to be careful accepting people’s experiences as confirmation of the truth of Christianity. People of other faiths and no faith have near death experiences that are quite different and supposedly teach us things that are inconsistent with Christianity. So if you take some experiences as reliable testimony, how do you counter the others? That’s the problem with finding the experiences themselves authoritative in any sense.</p>

<p>We haven’t written on this story in particular. Tim Challies <a href="http://www.challies.com/book-reviews/heaven-is-for-real" target="_blank">reviewed the book</a> and helps give us a biblical way of evaluating these reports. We have written on other accounts and what we can and can’t learn from near death experiences. Here’s one of those posts:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The cover story of <em><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/proof-heaven-doctors-experience-afterlife-65327" target="_blank">Newsweek</a></em> is Dr. Eben Alexander’s account of his near death experience and his discovery that his physicalistic worldview was unable to account for a real experience.</p>

<p>Dr. Alexander, a neurologist, contracted bacterial meningitis that shut down his cerebral cortex. There was no higher-order brain activity during the time he was monitored in the hospital. He says he was beyond a vegetative state. During this time, however, his consciousness—his mind—was aware and active. The doctor admits that he previously dismissed such accounts because he was a physicalist. He didn’t believe in the mind, only the brain. But he had to abandon that view when his own experience provided counter-evidence. There was no physical explanation for how he could have had conscious experiences when his brain was shut down.</p>

<p>He says there was no “scientific explanation”&nbsp;for this. That’s not quite true. There’s no physical explanation for his experience. There’s no scientific explanation if you define science by the philosophy of physicalism. There is a scientific explanation when his and other experiences are studied carefully and scientifically. It’s just that the explanation isn’t a physical one.</p>

<p>Gary Habermas and J. P. Moreland <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Death-Exploring-Evidence-Immortality/dp/1592445098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1349813269&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=gary+habermas+near+death" target="_blank">co-authored</a> a fascinating book about their careful investigation of near death experiences. Even after discounting many testimonies that can have other explanations, there are many reports, like Dr. Alexander’s, that have no other explanation so they must be taken seriously. What this indicates, as Dr. Alexander concluded from his own experience, is that physical explanations are not exhaustive—that there is a non-physical conscious mind and a non-physical world.</p>

<p>What we can’t conclude from these experiences that appear to be real is that what they heard and learned during these experiences are necessarily true. An experience can be real without the conclusions of the experience being accurate. That happens to us all the time even in this life. We have an experience, but we’re mistaken about what we think about it. It can happen in death, too. After all, once we have evidence for a non-physical world, we have reason to believe from the Bible, which tells us about this world, that there are beings there that deceive us. There are also beings who tell us the truth. But which do people encounter in their near death experiences? It’s hard to tell.</p>

<p>The reports from these experiences vary significantly. They can’t all be true because they present different claims about that reality. That doesn’t mean the experience didn’t happen—remember, these are experiences that have no other explanation. We can conclude there is evidence of an afterlife from these reports, just not what the nature of it is. For that, we have to return to the evidence for religious claims we all have access to in this life. Yes, we’re back to evidence for the reliability of the Bible—or other religions.</p>

<p>And that’s where Dr. Alexander’s experience can’t inform us. While much of what he experienced during that time could be construed to be consistent with Biblical descriptions of Heaven, that doesn’t mean that’s what he saw. What he tells us he learned there isn’t what the Bible tells us. He was told, “You have nothing to fear... There is nothing you can do wrong.”&nbsp;Now, the doctor’s own explanation of his religious beliefs prior to this don’t make him a Christian, even though he said that’s how he thought of himself. So it wasn’t that He was being reassured of his salvation. He didn’t belief Jesus was the incarnate God who sacrificed Himself for our sins. What he learned during his experience is no more authoritative than his (or anyone’s) religious convictions. Despite the extraordinary nature of near death experiences, we’re right back to evaluating competing religious claims and the evidence for them.</p>

<p>We can learn from valid near death experiences that the non-physical mind is real and that some kind of life apart from this world is real. The physical isn’t all there is. What we can’t learn from any near death experience is what we can learn here and now from the Bible.</p>

<p>Here’s a very interesting talk from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOFAPtY_NmI" target="_blank">Gary Habermas</a> on near death experiences.</p>
</blockquote>
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title: Sexual Expression Is a Worldview Issue
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 04/09/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/sexual-expression-is-a-worldview-issue
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I just <a href="https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/453919345622917120" target="_blank">came across</a> this <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sex-after-christianity/" target="_blank">piece</a> by Rod Dreher explaining why “gay marriage is not just a social revolution but a cosmological one”&nbsp;and had to post an excerpt. It explores the subject of marriage as a worldview issue—something I discussed in <a href="/w/it-s-about-the-difference-between-men-and-women" target="_blank">my post this morning</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Rieff, who died in 2006, was an unbeliever, but he understood that religion is the key to understanding any culture. For Rieff, the essence of any and every culture can be identified by what it forbids. Each imposes a series of moral demands on its members, for the sake of serving communal purposes, and helps them cope with these demands. A culture requires a <em>cultus</em>—a sense of sacred order, a cosmology that roots these moral demands within a metaphysical framework...</p>

<p>Paul’s teachings on sexual purity and marriage were adopted as liberating in the pornographic, sexually exploitive Greco-Roman culture of the time—exploitive especially of slaves and women, whose value to pagan males lay chiefly in their ability to produce children and provide sexual pleasure. Christianity, as articulated by Paul, worked a cultural revolution, restraining and channeling male eros, elevating the status of both women and of the human body, and infusing marriage—and marital sexuality—with love.</p>

<p>Christian marriage, Ruden writes, was “as different from anything before or since as the command to turn the other cheek.”&nbsp;The point is not that Christianity was only, or primarily, about redefining and revaluing sexuality, but that within a Christian anthropology sex takes on a new and different meaning, one that mandated a radical change of behavior and cultural norms. In Christianity, what people do with their sexuality cannot be separated from what the human person is...</p>

<p>[A]s Rieff recognizes, Christianity did establish a way to harness the sexual instinct, embed it within a community, and direct it in positive ways.</p>

<p>What makes our own era different from the past, says Rieff, is that we have ceased to believe in the Christian cultural framework, yet we have made it impossible to believe in any other that does what culture must do: restrain individual passions and channel them creatively toward communal purposes.</p>

<p>Rather, in the modern era, we have inverted the role of culture. Instead of teaching us what we must deprive ourselves of to be civilized, we have a society that tells us we find meaning and purpose in releasing ourselves from the old prohibitions.</p>

<p>How this came to be is a complicated story involving the rise of humanism, the advent of the Enlightenment, and the coming of modernity. As philosopher Charles Taylor writes in his magisterial religious and cultural history <em>A Secular Age</em>, “The entire ethical stance of moderns supposes and follows on from the death of God (and of course, of the meaningful cosmos).”&nbsp;To be modern is to believe in one’s individual desires as the locus of authority and self-definition...</p>

<p>[F]reedom and authenticity were to be found not in sexual withholding (the Christian view) but in sexual expression and assertion. That is how the modern American claims his freedom.</p>

<p>To Rieff, ours is a particular kind of “revolutionary epoch”&nbsp;because the revolution cannot by its nature be institutionalized. Because it denies the possibility of communal knowledge of binding truths transcending the individual, the revolution cannot establish a stable social order...</p>

<p>Our post-Christian culture, then, is an “anti-culture.”&nbsp;We are compelled by the logic of modernity and the myth of individual freedom to continue tearing away the last vestiges of the old order, convinced that true happiness and harmony will be ours once all limits have been nullified.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>His <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sex-after-christianity/" target="_blank">article</a> is sobering. When our culture lost the Christian view of the human person and each person became his own authority, we started down a dangerous road—one that ultimately won’t be able to sustain culture itself. The important thing to note here is that we can’t patch this up by convincing people to accept a man/woman view of marriage. The problem is much, much deeper than that.</p>

<p>As apologists, we preach Christ to the world because He is worthy, and we love Him, and we hope to help others see Him clearly enough to love Him. Rod Dreher’s article is a reminder that we should never be tempted to think that working to effect social change is more important than calling people to Christ and helping them understand our place in His world. For where He who is the True, the Good, and the Beautiful goes, truth, goodness, and beauty follow.</p>

<p>We don’t realize how much Christianity changed our civilization. And we don’t realize how much we’ll lose once we walk away from it.</p>
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title: STR Resources for Understanding and Explaining Easter
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 04/18/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/str-resources-for-understanding-and-explaining-easter
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Don’t let this Easter season pass you by without some reflection on what it means and why it matters. Here are some resources to help you do this:</p>

<h2>Bible: What Happened?</h2>

<ul>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/podcasts/weekly-audio/justin-taylor—-the-final-days-of-jesus-february-25-2014#.U03KvOagbR4" target="_blank">Greg’s interview with Justin Taylor</a> on <em>The Final Days of Jesus</em> (starts at 2:00:11)</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/articles/the-crucifixion#.U03AAuagbR5" target="_blank">The Crucifixion</a>—Greg’s outline of the Gospels’&nbsp;accounts of Jesus’&nbsp;arrest, trial, and crucifixion.</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/articles/the-resurrection#.U03ADuagbR5" target="_blank">The Resurrection</a>—Greg’s outline of Jesus’&nbsp;burial, resurrection, and appearances.</li>
</ul>

<h2>Theology: Why Did It Happen?</h2>

<ul>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/articles/three-passions#.U03AFOagbR5" target="_blank">Three Passions</a>—Greg explains, “[T]he Passion actually consists of three passions. The passionate intensity of God’s anger at us for our sins collides with the passionate intensity of God’s love for us, causing the passionate intensity of the agony of the cross to be shouldered by God Himself in human form: Jesus.”</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/w/the-christ-of-the-passion-what-the-movie-couldn-t-show-" target="_blank">The Christ of “The Passion”: What the Movie Couldn’t Show</a>—An extended version of the above post, including two moving illustrations to help us understand what happened on the cross: “Hidden to all but the Father is another certificate nailed to that cross. In the darkness that shrouds Calvary from the sixth to the ninth hour, a divine transaction is taking place; Jesus makes a trade with the Father. The crimes of all of humanity, every murder, every theft, every lustful glance; every hidden act of vice, every modest moment of pride, and every monstrous deed of evil; every crime of every man who ever lived, these Jesus takes upon Himself as if guilty of all.”</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/blog/our-certificates-of-debt#.U03AHeagbR5" target="_blank">Our Certificates of Debt</a>—Melinda explains the concept of a “certificate of debt”: “In Roman times, this certificate was a list of crimes committed against the state that required ’payment,’&nbsp;much like an indictment in our legal system today. The Romans gave Jesus a certificate of debt when He was sentenced to die; it was nailed to the cross: ’Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews’&nbsp;(John 19:19). When the crimes were paid for, the certificate was canceled and was stamped with the word tetelestai, meaning ’paid in full.’&nbsp;Paul says [in Colossians 2:14] that Jesus ’canceled out’&nbsp;(paid) our certificate of debt.”</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/blog/what-does-christ-s-resurrection-mean-for-us#.U03E9eagbR4" target="_blank">What Does Christ’s Resurrection Mean for Us?</a>—I respond to the question “Why is the resurrection so celebrated if our sins were paid for on the cross?”: “While there are a variety of responses to this (Jesus’&nbsp;victory over death, an affirmation of His deity, a taste of the coming redemption of our bodies, etc.), in this post I’ll focus on what we learn about the work of Christ in Hebrews 7-10... Not only was it necessary for Christ to enter heaven with the blood of His covenant on our behalf, but He also continues to intercede on our behalf... Christ’s intercession for us in heaven before the Father is necessary for our eternal salvation. Only Christ’s death could serve as our needed sacrifice, but only Christ’s resurrection could make Him our living priest.”</li>
</ul>

<h2>Apologetics: Reasons to Think It Happened</h2>

<ul>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/articles/did-jesus-really-rise-from-the-dead#.U03HXOagbR5" target="_blank">Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?</a>—Brett gives arguments for the resurrection: “If the bones of Jesus were found tomorrow, would you walk away from Christianity? You should. Why? Because faith in a dead Jesus is worthless. Even the Apostle Paul says so.”</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.watermark.org/media/two-miracles/3057/" target="_blank">Two Miracles</a>—A video of Greg speaking about Jesus’&nbsp;miraculous death and resurrection: “The first miracle no one saw, because it couldn’t be seen except by God Himself. The second miracle only a few saw, but multitudes actually experienced.”</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/publications/two-miracles#.WrlOxpMbMXo" target="_blank">Two Miracles</a>—A written version of the ideas in Greg’s talk linked above.</li>
</ul>

<p>He is risen!</p>
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title: Jesus’ Wife Fragment
topic: Theology
author: Melinda Penner
date: 04/11/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/jesus-wife-fragment
content:
            <div> 
		<p>In the fall of 2012, Harvard historian Karen King announced she’d been given a fragment of a manuscript that mentioned Jesus’&nbsp;wife. It’s in the news again because studies have indicated it’s not a modern forgery. But whether or not it was a forgery isn’t the main issue. The date of the manuscript is what’s relevant, and even in 2012 when the announcement was made, it was considered to be a few centuries after Jesus—and long after the New Testament documents were written. So it presented no authoritative rival to those documents about Jesus. The <a href="http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/04/jesus-wife-fragment-appears-real" target="_blank">recent studies</a> date it to 669-859 CE. And the analysis suggests that the original might date back to the third century, around the same time as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary. Still long after the <a href="http://www.str.org/blog/based-on-eyewitness-accounts#.U0cKusfc1EY" target="_blank">eyewitness testimonies</a> were written about Jesus. All this fragment may tell us is what some people thought or wrote about Jesus centuries after His life on earth; whereas the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses not long after Jesus.</p>

<p>Here’s what we wrote about it in 2012:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>A faded piece of papyrus refers to Jesus’&nbsp;wife. Just read the first paragraph of the story and, fortunately, it leads with the most important piece of information—it’s from the 4th century. That’s 300 years at least after Jesus ministry on earth, and centuries later than the <a href="http://michaeljkruger.com/459/" target="_blank">New Testament documents were written</a>.</p>

<p>The gnostic gospels were rejected by the church because they knew they weren’t accounts written close to the time they report, as the New Testament documents were. The gnostic gospels date at least more than 100 years after Jesus, most of them much longer than that. They weren’t considered authoritative because they were far removed from Jesus life and the authorship couldn’t be traced to an eyewitness. Someone close to Jesus’&nbsp;life was in a much better position to report accurately about his life than someone three centuries removed.</p>

<p>Even if authentic, this fragment is dated way too late to take seriously. Even Karen King, the scholar who revealed the fragment cautions that.</p>

<p>We also don’t know what kind of document the fragment is from, what kind of literature it is. There is so much unknown here and the response is way overblown.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, ancient <a href="http://www.csntm.org/manuscript" target="_blank">manuscript</a> fragments that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Collection" target="_blank">support</a> the Bible are discovered and cataloged quite often, but don’t get the same press attention.</p>

<p>Michael Kruger <a href="http://michaeljkruger.com/10-misconceptions-about-the-nt-canon-6-in-the-early-stages-apocryphal-books-were-as-popular-as-the-canonical-books/" target="_blank">cites</a> some key differences between the gnostic gospels and the New Testament documents.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read what textual scholar Dan Wallace had to say <a href="http://danielbwallace.com/2012/09/21/reality-check-the-jesus-wife-coptic-fragment/" target="_blank">about the text of the fragment</a> when it was discovered.</p>
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title: A Principle for Conversational Prayer
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/17/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/a-principle-for-conversational-prayer
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>I have instructed our staff at STR that when we meet for prayer, we pray according to the acronym SIP: specifically, intelligibly, and persuasively.</em></p>

<p>Let me start with a frank admission: Prayer is difficult for me. Some things come easily, but prayer is not one of them. Of course, this does not make prayer optional in the least. It simply means I have to work harder at it to be consistent and effective.</p>

<p>I suspect there are many Christians just like me in this regard. Maybe you would include yourself in that group. If so, these thoughts on prayer might be helpful to you.</p>

<p>Here is the key observation that has helped improve my own prayer life: Prayer is harder when it is rambling. It is harder for the person praying, and it is harder for those listening when prayer is in a group.</p>

<p>One of my frustrations when praying with others is that Christians often don’t pray intelligibly. We tell young Christians who are unaccustomed to prayer to simply talk normally when speaking to God. “Prayer is conversation,”&nbsp;we say. And it is.</p>

<p>That is what we tell them, but that is not what we do when we pray with them. When it comes to God, our normal way of speaking often goes out the window.</p>

<p>We lace our prayers with contrived Christian mumbo jumbo (some have called it “Christian psycho-babble”). We insert useless words like “just”&nbsp;in virtually every phrase. Then we use the words “Lord,”&nbsp;“Father,”&nbsp;and “Jesus”&nbsp;as if they were punctuation marks. In short, we talk to God in ways we wouldn’t think of talking when speaking with any other intelligent person.</p>

<p>This habit is hard to break. I know from personal experience. But I have a solution that has helped me trim down the nonsense. I have instructed our staff at STR that when we meet for prayer, we pray according to the acronym SIP: specifically, intelligibly, and persuasively.</p>

<p>I take this cue from the prayers in the Bible (Daniel 9:3-19 is an example). Biblical prayers have content, clarity, and power. There is no spiritual blather. In many cases, they include reasons why God should act, as if the person praying were persuading Him of something He wouldn’t do apart from their entreaty. Sometimes the reasons are based on the need. Other times they are based on God’s character or what might happen to His reputation if He ignored the request (this was a favorite ploy of Moses’).</p>

<p>These are the things you would normally—and quite naturally—say if you were speaking to someone of importance making request for help or provision. You’d explain your need, why you need it, and why your request should be granted.</p>

<p>I think we should do the same with God. We should pray in full sentences, intelligibly, with complete thoughts. Our prayers should include clear, specific requests, and straightforward, genuine expressions of feeling and thanks. We should also give reasons why God ought to respond to our appeals.</p>

<p>Some people find that occasionally writing their prayers out is helpful. It forces them to put more clarity and substance into their entreaties.</p>

<p>I hope you did not skim over the phrase “I have instructed our staff at STR...”&nbsp;Since I am the spiritual head of Stand to Reason, this is one of the ways I want to be a mentor to those on our team. This may apply to you, too.</p>

<p>I have often wondered why those training leaders in their youth group (for example) apparently never taught the worship team how to pray in public. Those who lead prayer for the group are examples to the rest. If they model good prayer habits, others will likely follow their lead. But the same works in reverse, too.</p>

<p>So, if you have spiritual leadership responsibilities of any sort—with your family, your church, or accountability group—you may want to do two things in response to what I’ve said here.</p>

<p>First, apply the SIP principle to your own prayer life. Train yourself to pray specifically, intelligibly, and persuasively. Even if prayer is not as difficult for you as it is for me, I think you’ll find that this practice will help your prayers be more powerful and fulfilling.</p>

<p>Second, instruct those in your spiritual charge how to pray “conversationally.”&nbsp;Then model it for them when you pray together. There is no need to be pious, just clear and genuine. In this way, you will be helping yourself and also those around you.</p>
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title: Is God in Time?
topic: Philosophy
author: Greg Koukl
date: 04/23/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/is-god-in-time-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>The Scriptures seem to identify a God in time, yet a God that is somehow beyond time, not constrained by it the way we are (1 Peter 3).</em></p>

<p>Put your thinking caps on today. We’re going to talk about time.</p>

<p>It’s common for us to make the comment “The spaceless, timeless God”&nbsp;or “Then we’ll pass out of time, into eternity.”&nbsp;However, the Scripture is not clear about God’s timelessness. Most of the verses seem to indicate God is in time: Rev 1:4; Rev 4:8, Ps 90, Jude 25, 2 Pet 3:8.</p>

<p>Two popular books describe a picture of God as timeless. Philip Yancey’s book <em>Disappointment with God</em> and C.S. Lewis in <em>Mere Christianity.</em> Lewis and Yancey both flounder because of theological and philosophical problems that both seem unaware of.</p>

<p>Let’s define time and see if God qualifies as being in time.</p>

<p>First, we need a definition or a description of time that seems to capture our basic sense of it. Second, we need to see if this definition applies in any way to God. Third, we need to address some of the misconceptions-philosophical and theological-that Yancey seems to have overlooked.</p>

<p>What is time? To put it most simply, time is duration.</p>

<p>This is where clocks come in (any kind of clock). Clocks mark change or, more precisely, clocks are examples of change that seem to indicate the passage of time. One could say, then, that time is a necessary precondition for change and change is a sufficient condition to establish the passage of time. Maybe there can be time (duration) without change, but it doesn’t seem possible to have change without time.</p>

<p>Here’s why. If a certain state of affairs is followed by another state of affairs (a change in property exemplification, or relations, etc.) that had not already been contemporaneous-at the same “time”-with the first (as the sequence of numbers might be), then it seems a temporal change has taken place. In our normal way of speaking we say that the first state of affairs is past and the second is present. In other words, there is at least one true past-tensed fact.</p>

<p>It seems that if real change takes place then two entirely different conditions exist in temporal relationship to each other, one earlier and one later. (Notice I didn’t say “before and after.”&nbsp;These terms don’t necessarily imply time, only order. Numbers are in a particular order, but there doesn’t seem to be any temporal quality to that order.)</p>

<p>Whenever there’s change of any kind we know that time has passed.</p>

<p>So, we have a simple test for the existence of time. If there are tensed facts-in this case, a fact about the past-then time has passed. Duration has been measured. Therefore, time must exist. Further, agents, which participate in this change, must sustain change themselves, even if it is an extrinsic change in relations to the events in question. Therefore these agents are in time also.</p>

<p>Now, that seems pretty straightforward to me. If God is an agent of change, then He must be in time or at least enter time at the particular point that the change obtains. This is called the A-theory of time. Tenses are real and becoming is real because real change marks duration, distinguishing past from present from future.</p>

<p>There seems to be only one way to avoid this conclusion. Maybe the relations of “earlier than”&nbsp;and “later than”&nbsp;are not temporal at all, but causal in a non-temporal way, like one plate eternally resting upon another, the bottom one a-temporally causing the position of the top one (Lewis uses this illustration in another context).</p>

<p>Is it possible time can be reduced to a series of static events, causally related, yet not in time? Is it possible that all of history is one big space-time manifold-a “block universe”? From the inside we sense the “flow”&nbsp;of time, but in fact each moment is just a static, unmoving, slice of the story. This is Lewis and Yancey’s solution. It’s called the B-theory of time, but let’s just call it the storybook view.</p>

<p>There are Christian philosophers who hold to this view because it’s the only view that allows God to be totally timeless. But as we’ve seen in our definition, such people can’t admit to any change in the universe because change immediately thrusts us into time. We have to have God in a changeless state, and the time-space universe existing as a static storybook block.</p>

<p>Okay so far, but here’s the problem. When did God create the universe out of nothing? On the B-view, the universe would have had to exist in eternal causal dependence on God, but there never was a “time”&nbsp;when it came into existence. It always existed with God. He is the eternal cause of it-like those two plates, one resting upon the other for eternity-but it never came into existence at any time.</p>

<p>This seems to me to be too high of a price to pay to assert a timeless God.</p>

<p>If God does create, then the game is up. He may have had an eternal intention to do certain things, but then He must exercise His will, He must act with power, and He must create the universe. And it does seem to be that such a creation was a process, at least six days, and that means God was in time, at least by then.</p>

<p>What about God in a kind of hypertime? God can still act and create, but He can be above our time and intervene at different points in our timeline. This was Lewis’s view in Narnia. But there’s a problem. Yancey says it’s “like someone in the real world, who makes a brief appearance in a movie.”&nbsp;There is something unreal about this world. Imagine being a character in a book. What is missing? There is no “now.”&nbsp;Everything can be marked by a date, but what motivates action?</p>

<p>Further, any particular slice of the story doesn’t define any given character. The character is only a whole character when the complete story is viewed from beginning to end. No individual person is fully present in any given “moment.”&nbsp;On any given page of our story we don’t see real persons; we only view agents and events. It’s only after our story completely unfolds that we have our character in full.</p>

<p>This is actually one view of what a person is. It’s called the perdurance view. You never have a whole person at any given point of time, only slices of a person. All the events of that person’s life amount to the whole person. In a way, you’re not completely you until you’re gone.</p>

<p>Isn’t this a strange way to view persons? Doesn’t it seem that at this moment you are fully the person you are, the same actual person you were a year ago, and the same one you’ll be a year from now? Yes, you’ll change. You’ll learn more and forget some. You’ll gain weight or gain muscles over time. But in a very strict sense, you are still the same person; you are still the same you. That’s why we can try you for a crime you committed in the past. You’re still the same you, but such a thing would be impossible on this storybook view of time.</p>

<p>In our analysis of time, it seems clear that God cannot act in a temporally causal way and still be said to be timeless. If God acts to create, then this change in a state of affairs immediately becomes past to Him. God is characterized by duration at that point and tensed facts are true of Him (“In the Beginning God created [tensed] the heavens and the earth.”).</p>

<p>The only way to avoid this is to call our experience of time’s flow an illusion and opt for a storybook view of time. But this has its own problems. It’s hard to make any sense out of personal identity through the series of events. And the notion of “now”&nbsp;simply disappears.</p>

<p>Certainly, as Yancey points out, there is a difference between God’s perspective and our own. But the difference is in His knowledge, not in His relationship to time. God knows the future in advance; He doesn’t see it in His eternal present.</p>

<p>The critical issue in determinism is not whether the future is fixed or not, but rather what fixes it. If the future is to be a certain way (known through God’s perfect knowledge of future-tensed facts) because of individual choices He knows of, then there’s no threat of determinism.</p>

<p>The Scriptures seem to identify a God in time, yet a God that is somehow beyond time, not constrained by it the way we are (1 Peter 3). God could have existed during an unmetered duration-or during no “time”&nbsp;at all-with an eternal purpose to create the world He wanted, and an eternal purpose to accomplish particular things in each or our lives. And when He acted to create He entered into time, of necessity, now having a past and a present.</p>

<p>Tremendous comfort can still come from knowing that God has always been in control and will never relinquish it. One might also draw a deeper comfort from knowing that God is in time with me right now, not unreachably transcendent, but right in this moment with me. And because He’s in this moment He can act to respond to my needs and prayers.</p>
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title: What If Jesus Meant What He Said? Mentoring Letter April 2014
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/31/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-if-jesus-meant-what-he-said-mentoring-letter-april-2014
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>It isn’t the poor who Jesus commends on the Sermon on the Mount, but rather the poor in Spirit, not the poverty stricken, but the morally broken. The Gospel Jesus preached was much more radical than the gospel of social justice.</em></p>

<p>April 1, 2014</p>

<p>Sometimes, knowing what Jesus did not come to do is almost as important as knowing what He did come to do because a wrong understanding of the first can lead to confusion on the second.</p>

<p>Two groups seem to go astray here.</p>

<p>The first are non-Christians enamored with Jesus for what they take to be His emphasis on the Golden Rule, love for one’s neighbor, concern for the poor and the outcast, and “tolerance”&nbsp;(the latter understood as accepting all and judging none)—broadly what has come to be called “social justice.”</p>

<p>The second group are Christians who, focusing on the “red letter”&nbsp;sections of the Gospels—the actual words of Jesus often rendered in red so they stand out—come to the same conclusion as the first group, on the main. These believers ask, “What if Jesus meant what He said?”&nbsp;in discourses like the Sermon on the Mount. Again, social justice.</p>

<p>For those tempted to summarize Jesus this way, consider for a moment the final record of Jesus’&nbsp;life—the last testament of His purpose and mission—written by one of Jesus’&nbsp;intimate inner circle, the “beloved”&nbsp;disciple John.</p>

<p>Surprisingly, from John 1:1 to John 21:25 there is not a single verse that advances the cause of social justice. Not one. Jesus’&nbsp;only mention of the poor is this—“The poor you always have with you”&nbsp;(Jn. 12:8).</p>

<p>Check any major discourse of Jesus—the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7), the Bread of Life Discourse (Jn. 6), the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24, Lk. 21, Mk. 13), or the Upper Room Discourse (Jn. 13-17)—and you will search in vain for emphasis on the social gospel. Why?</p>

<p>Indeed, check any Gospel. Yes, occasionally you will find a mention of the poor, but almost always when Jesus is making a point about something else—hypocrisy (Matt. 6:2-3), a widow’s generosity (Lk. 21:2-3), Zaccheus’s repentance (Lk. 19:8), the rich young ruler’s confusion (Matt. 19:21), or a lesson about the afterlife (Lk. 16:20, 22). Why?</p>

<p>Because proclaiming social justice was not Jesus’&nbsp;mission. Jesus’&nbsp;discourses focus on something else. The Gospels focus on something else. The Epistles focus on something else. Not on the works of Christians, but rather on the work of Christ.</p>

<p>It isn’t the poor who Jesus commends on the Sermon on the Mount (and elsewhere), but rather the poor in Spirit, not the poverty stricken, but the morally broken.</p>

<p>Picture the tax collector Jesus tells about—hardly destitute—beating his breast pleading, “God be merciful to me, the sinner”&nbsp;(Luke 18:9-14). This man proclaiming his spiritual poverty went away justified while the Pharisee, whose spiritual arrogance clouded his genuine spiritual need, did not.</p>

<p>The main divide for Jesus was not between the poor and the rich, but between the proud and the repentant. In His own words:</p>

<p>• “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”&nbsp;(Lk. 6:32).</p>

<p>• “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many”&nbsp;(Matt. 20:28).</p>

<p>• “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost”&nbsp;( Lk. 19:10).</p>

<p>• “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him”&nbsp;(Jn. 3:17).</p>

<p>I point this out not to deemphasize our obligation to the poor because certainly the Bible teaches us to be compassionate and help those in material need. I point this out to emphasize the centrality of the Gospel. Did Jesus care about the poor and downtrodden? Of course He did. He also cared about the rich and powerful. Jesus helped everyone and anyone who came to Him—poor beggar or prostitute, wealthy tax collector or Pharisee.</p>

<p>“Social justice”—a.k.a. the “social gospel”—is not the Gospel. It was not Jesus’&nbsp;message. It is not why He came. His real message was much more radical.</p>

<p>“What if Jesus meant what He said?”&nbsp;Indeed. That’s my question, too.</p>

<p>So many confusing messages and well-meaning, yet unbiblical viewpoints find their way to the forefront of our society. But at Stand to Reason, we continue to dedicate ourselves to ensuring you and others live and act in light of the true Gospel of Christ.</p>

<p>Will you send a gift of support this month to help STR continue to provide insightful resources that strengthen your knowledge and wisdom during this pivotal time?</p>

<p>Can we count on your donation this month?</p>

<p>As thanks for your gift, I’ve put together a talk I’d like you to have called “Credo: The Story of Reality.”&nbsp;It briefly outlines the storyline of Christianity from Genesis to Revelation in a memorable way that keeps first things first so that you’re equipped to share the Biblical message.</p>

<p>Thank you for standing with STR.</p>

<p>Yours for the true Gospel,</p>

<p>Gregory Koukl</p>
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title: Do Muslims Love Jesus?
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 04/05/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/do-muslims-love-jesus-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Muslims love Jesus too. At least, that’s what a new <a href="http://www.christiantoday.com/article/jesus.is.muslim.billboards.concern.christians/36429.htm" target="_blank">billboard campaign</a> claims. The question, though, is which Jesus do they love?</p>

<p>There’s the Jesus described by the Gospel writers. These eyewitnesses walked with Jesus, ate with him, talked with him, and saw Him perform miracles. They knew Him.</p>

<p>Then, there’s the Jesus described 600 years later by the Qur’an. That author did not know Jesus, see Jesus, or live anywhere near where Jesus ministered.</p>

<p>As one would expect, the Jesus of the Qur’an looks a lot different than the biblical Jesus. That’s significant, since the billboard campaign gives the impression that Muslims love the same Jesus that Christians do.</p>

<p>But that’s not the case. The Jesus of the Bible is the son of God, the second person of the Trinity, was crucified, resurrected, and atoned for the sins of mankind. The Qur’an, on the other hand, denies every one of these points: the Trinity, His death on the cross, His resurrection, and the atonement. These differences aren’t merely incidental details. They are fundamental attributes of the identity and role of Christ. If you deny them, you deny the real Jesus.</p>

<p>Not only does the Qur’an paint a <em>different</em> picture of Jesus, it depicts an <em>Islamicized</em> version of Him. New Testament scholar Craig Evans points out, “All of the Qur’anic traditions are dependent on the New Testament and/or Christian teachings... Much of it reflects Islamic ideas. Some of it may reflect aspects of Jewish-Christian polemic. None derives from early, independent sources.”</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against Muslims loving Jesus. I hope they fully embrace Him, His teachings, and His atoning work. But they need to love the Jesus of history, not the Christ of the Qur’an. The former is real while the latter is fictionalized.</p>

<p>Muslims, in fact, have good reason to accept the biblical Jesus. Their highest authority, the Qur’an, affirms the Gospel (and also the Torah and Psalms) as a divine revelation from Allah. It places the Gospel on par with the Qur’an, saying that Muslims should believe in both revelations (Surah 29:46) and “Make no difference between one and another of them”&nbsp;(Surah 2:136).</p>

<p>I realize that present-day Muslims might balk at these Qur’anic commands and claim the Christian scriptures are corrupted. This, though, is a Muslim belief and not a Qur’anic teaching. For four hundred years after Mohammed, no Muslim scholar claimed the Bible was corrupt. Now, however, the claim of corruption is deeply embedded in Muslim culture, but it’s not backed by their highest authority. I explain more about how Muslims can accept the Gospel in <a href="https://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK331" target="_blank">The Ambassador’s Guide to Islam</a>.</p>

<p>The bottom line, though, is that anyone can claim to love Jesus. But who is this Jesus you’re claiming to love? While Jehovah’s Witnesses might love Jesus, they claim he is the archangel Michael. While Mormons might claim to love Jesus, they believe he is a god, but not <em>the</em> God. In the same way, Muslims claim to love Jesus, but they believe he is merely a human and a prophet like Moses or Mohammed.</p>

<p>It’s one thing to fashion Jesus to your liking and claim to love him. That’s easy. It’s a different thing to love Jesus as He truly exists.</p>

<p>So, while I think the billboard campaign is misleading, I think Christians can still use a Muslim’s love or commitment to Christ as a common denominator leading to further discussion. We may have the opportunity to eventually point Muslims to His true identity found in the Gospels.</p>
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title: Gnosticism and Kabbalah in Aronofsky’s Noah
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 04/02/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/gnosticism-and-kabbalah-in-aronofsky-s-noah
content:
            <div> 
		<p>After seeing <em>Noah</em>, I think some reviewers who gave strongly positive reviews of the film read their own theology into the story where it didn’t actually exist, resulting in confusingly divergent reviews from people I respect. My assessment is that the movie is mediocre at best and the theology is terrible, but if you intend to see it, there’s a <a href="http://drbrianmattson.com/journal/2014/3/31/sympathy-for-the-devil" target="_blank">review by Brian Mattson</a> you should read that will help you interpret the ideas advocated in the film.</p>

<p>Dr. Mattson makes a compelling case that the creator of <em>Noah</em>, Darren Aronofsky, didn’t take liberties with the Bible story:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Aronofsky hasn’t “taken liberties”&nbsp;with anything.</p>

<p><em>The Bible is not his text</em>...</p>

<p>Darren Aronofsky has produced a retelling of the Noah story without reference to the Bible at all. This was not, as he claimed, just a storied tradition of run-of-the-mill Jewish “Midrash.”&nbsp;This was a thoroughly pagan retelling of the Noah story direct from Kabbalist and Gnostic sources.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>It’s worth reading the entire article to see the specific examples he gives of the parallels between the ideas in <em>Noah</em> and Gnosticism/Kabbalah. Here’s one:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The world of Aronofsky’s <em>Noah</em> is a thoroughly Gnostic one: a graded universe of “higher”&nbsp;and “lower.”&nbsp;The “spiritual”&nbsp;is good, and way, way, way “up there”&nbsp;where the ineffable, <em>unspeaking</em> god dwells, and the “material”&nbsp;is bad, and way, way down here where our spirits are encased in material flesh. This is not only true of the fallen sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, but of fallen angels, who are explicitly depicted as being spirits <em>trapped</em> inside a material “body”&nbsp;of cooled molten lava.</p>

<p>Admittedly, they make pretty nifty movie characters, but they’re also notorious in Gnostic speculation. Gnostics call them <em>Archons</em>, lesser divine beings or angels who aid “The Creator”&nbsp;in forming the visible universe. And <em>Kabbalah</em> has a pantheon of angelic beings of its own all up and down the ladder of “divine being.”&nbsp;And fallen angels are never totally fallen in this brand of mysticism. To quote the <em>Zohar</em> again, a central <em>Kabbalah</em> text: “All things of which this world consists, the spirit as well as the body, will return to the principle and the root from which they came.”&nbsp;Funny. That’s exactly what happens to Aronofsky’s Lava Monsters. They redeem themselves, shed their outer material skin, and fly back to the heavens. Incidentally, I noticed that in the film, as the family is traveling through a desolate wasteland, Shem asks his father: “Is this a <em>Zohar</em> mine?”&nbsp;Yep. That’s the name of <em>Kabbalah’s</em> sacred text.</p>

<p><em>The entire movie is, figuratively, a “Zohar”&nbsp;mine.</em></p>
</blockquote>

<p>Dr. Mattson’s understanding of <em>Noah</em> certainly explains the oddity of Tubal-Cain (the villain) trying to convince Noah’s son that since he’s made in the image of God, he ought to follow the biblical command of God to “fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over”&nbsp;the creatures in it. Why would Aronofsky have the villain advocate God’s command from <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis+1%3A27-31&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Genesis 1</a>? (Some spoilers ahead):</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[W]hen Gnostics speak about “The Creator”&nbsp;they are <em>not talking about God</em>. Oh, here in an affluent world living off the fruits of Christendom the term “Creator”&nbsp;generally denotes the true and living God. But here’s a little “Gnosticism 101”&nbsp;for you: the <em>Creator of the material world</em> is an ignorant, arrogant, jealous, exclusive, violent, low-level, bastard son of a low level deity. He’s responsible for creating the “unspiritual”&nbsp;world of flesh and matter, and he himself is so ignorant of the spiritual world he fancies himself the “only God”&nbsp;and demands absolute obedience. They generally call him “Yahweh.”&nbsp;Or other names, too (Ialdabaoth, for example).</p>

<p>This Creator tries to keep Adam and Eve from the true knowledge of the divine and, when they disobey, flies into a rage and boots them from the garden.</p>

<p>In other words, in case you’re losing the plot here: <em>The serpent was right all along</em>...</p>

<p>The world of Gnostic mysticism is bewildering with a myriad of varieties. But, generally speaking, they hold in common that the <em>serpent</em> is “Sophia,”&nbsp;“Mother,”&nbsp;or “Wisdom.”&nbsp;The <em>serpent</em> represents the <em>true</em> divine, and the claims of “The Creator”&nbsp;are false...</p>

<p>Many reviewers thought Noah’s change into a homicidal maniac on the ark, wanting to kill his son’s two newborn daughters, was a weird plot twist. It isn’t weird at all. In the Director’s view, Noah is worshiping a <em>false, homicidal maniac</em> of a god. The more faithful and “godly”&nbsp;Noah becomes, the more <em>homicidal</em> he becomes. He is becoming every bit the “image of god”&nbsp;that the “evil”&nbsp;guy who keeps talking about the “image of god,”&nbsp;Tubal-Cain, is.</p>

<p>But Noah fails “The Creator.”&nbsp;He cannot wipe out all life like his god wants him to do. “When I looked at those two girls, my heart was filled with nothing but <em>love</em>,“&nbsp;he says. Noah now has something “The Creator”&nbsp;doesn’t. Love. And Mercy. But where did he get it? And why now?</p>

<p>In the immediately preceding scene Noah killed Tubal-Cain and <em>recovered the snakeskin relic</em>: “Sophia,”&nbsp;“Wisdom,���&nbsp;the true light of the divine.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I think Dr. Mattson is really on to something here, and I encourage you to read the rest of his <a href="http://drbrianmattson.com/journal/2014/3/31/sympathy-for-the-devil" target="_blank">review</a>.</p>
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title: Is Faith Blind?
topic: Theology
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 03/01/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/is-faith-blind-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Would you allow a teenager to perform brain surgery on you? Would you get in a stranger’s van while in a dark alley in New York? Do you send money to Nigerians who promise you commission if you give them your credit card information over email? Why not? You’re a Christian, right? Don’t you have faith?</p>

<p>I know what you’re thinking. <em>Sure I have faith, but I’m not stupid. My faith is not...blind.</em> That’s the way the culture understands the term, though. “The faithful”&nbsp;or “those who have faith”&nbsp;is code-speak for people who believe things that are contrary to reason. You use faith to muscle up belief in something that lacks evidence (or when the evidence is against it).</p>

<p>Atheism’s hero, Richard Dawkins, defines it the same way. He writes, “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”*</p>

<p>Strangely, that’s also how many believers understand faith. It’s tantamount to hope, confidence, or wishful thinking. Faith and reason are opposite, it’s thought. The more reasons you have, the less room there is for faith.</p>

<p>But this definition is foreign to the Bible. The Greek word for faith, <em>pistis</em>, is derived from the verb <em>pisteuo</em>, which means “to convince by argument.”&nbsp;Hebrews 11:1 explains that faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”&nbsp;Some translations replace “conviction”&nbsp;with “evidence.”&nbsp;Faith, then, is being convinced that the things we can’t see (e.g. God, heaven, the resurrection, etc.) are real.</p>

<p>The word “faith”&nbsp;is so often misunderstood that I avoid using it in most conversations. I use a different word in its place: trust. This better characterizes the Bible’s use of faith, but is free of the misleading baggage.</p>

<p>Biblical faith, then, is not blind, but functions the same way as trust. You don’t blindly trust people. They have to earn it. You put your trust in people you have good reason to trust.</p>

<p>Biblical faith is also not contrary to reason. It’s consistent with reason. You put your trust (faith) in what you have good reason to believe is true.</p>

<p>That’s not only my assessment. It’s God’s understanding as well. He routinely reminds the Israelites why they can trust Him (put their faith in Him). God is the One who delivered them from slavery. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery”&nbsp;(Exod. 20:2). This is repeated over and over and over (Exod. 13:3, 13:14, 33:1, Lev. 25:38, Deut. 5:6, 6:12, etc.). That’s why the Jews can trust—put their faith in—God.</p>

<p>Jesus also operated with this understanding of faith. John wrote 21 chapters about Jesus in his Gospel, much of it records supernatural works. Why? He explains, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”&nbsp;(John 20:31). In other words, you can trust Christ because His miraculous works are a testament to His claims and credibility.</p>

<p>One of my favorite stories about Jesus is when a paralytic is lowered through the roof of a house (Mark 2:1-12). Jesus says to the man, “Your sins are forgiven.”&nbsp;Realizing the Pharisees believe only God can forgive sins, Jesus asks, “Which is easier to say to this paralyzed man, ’Your sins are forgiven,’&nbsp;or to say, ’Get up, take your mat and walk’?”&nbsp;That’s a rhetorical question. It’s obviously easier to tell a man his sins are forgiven because no one can disprove your claim. It’s a supernatural act hidden from human eyes. Jesus continues: “But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”&nbsp;So, he tells the paralytic, “Get up, take your mat and go home.”</p>

<p>Notice Jesus’&nbsp;point. In order to prove He has the ability to do something in the unseen, spiritual realm (forgive sins), he performs a miracle in the visible, physical realm (make a paralytic walk). He doesn’t expect people to believe Him just because He says so. Rather, Jesus gives people a powerful reason to trust (put their faith in) His claim to forgive sins.</p>

<p>Faith, though, is not merely static trust. It also leads to action. It’s a willingness to act because you’re convinced of the truth. You trust the airline pilot, so you get on the plane. You trust your doctor, so you go under the knife. You trust your bank, so you put your money there. Your trust leads to action.</p>

<p>In the same way, faith in God is also trust that leads to action. That’s why James said faith without works (action) is dead (James 2:17). Our faith in God should result in behavior that demonstrates our trust in Him. Hebrews 11 goes to great lengths to describe the faith of those who trusted God. Their faith led to incredible action. Noah trusted God, and so he built the ark (Heb. 11:7). Abraham trusted God, so he offered Isaac as a sacrifice (Heb. 11:13). Moses trusted God, and so he led his people out of Egypt and through the Red Sea (Heb. 11:24-29). Faith is not just an attitude of trust. It entails action.</p>

<p>The good news about faith is that God honors even the smallest amount. When I fly around the country, I see both seasoned travelers and first-time fliers. The businessmen are relaxed, almost bored, at the thought of flying 500 mph at nearly 40,000 feet above the earth. The grandma on her first flight, however, grips her armrest like her life depends on it. Although the seasoned traveler has more trust (faith) in the airplane, both passengers <em>safely arrive at the destination</em> and <em>at the same time</em>. Their outcome is the same, regardless of how large or little their faith in flying.</p>

<p>In the same way, Christians have different levels of faith. Some trust Him a little, while others trust Him a lot. God doesn’t discriminate, though. He accepts everyone who puts their trust in Him, regardless of the amount.</p>

<p>That’s why apologetics (defending the faith) is so vital. It helps people see why they can trust Jesus: He’s trustworthy. Apologetics isn’t an end in itself. It’s a means to an end. It’s the tool that either eliminates objections to faith or establishes reasons for people to put their trust—their faith—in Christ.</p>

<p>* Richard Dawkins, Lecture from ’The Nullifidian’&nbsp;(Dec 94), <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150403080517/http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/89" target="">http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/89</a>, current as of 2/15/14</p>
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title: Hobby Lobby Case: Are Religious Exemptions Unconstitutional?
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/25/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/hobby-lobby-case-are-religious-exemptions-unconstitutional-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Robert George and Hamza Yusuf <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCsQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304914204579397170026645290.html&amp;ei=TeAwU93SH8TqoAT19YL4Bw&amp;usg=AFQjCNF-eO04YA6T1dCEEKKno-JV7GdGNA&amp;sig2=fuVJ6HbIeKhHSmrCS63yig&amp;bvm=bv.63587204,d.cGU" target="_blank">argue</a> against the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s claim that religious exemptions made for the sake of religious freedom (such as in the case of Hobby Lobby) are actually unconstitutionally establishing religion:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The robust conception of religious freedom that has served our nation so well is now being challenged in the case of <em>Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.</em>, which will be argued before the Supreme Court on March 25. Hobby Lobby (a chain of arts and crafts stores) and its owners, the Green family, are seeking a religious exemption from parts of ObamaCare’s contraception and abortion-drug mandate. Their Christian faith forbids them from paying for insurance coverage for the provision of four drugs and devices that may act to terminate newly conceived human lives. Although the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals held that an exemption is required under federal civil-rights law, the government has asked the Supreme Court to compel the Greens to violate their consciences—which they will not do—or suffer crippling fines.</p>

<p>Some of the government’s supporters—like the Freedom From Religion Foundation—have offered the high court in an amicus brief an even more extreme argument. They claim that the whole practice of religious exemptions constitutes an unconstitutional “establishment of religion,”&nbsp;at least when protecting religious minorities deprives others of the chance to benefit from these minorities’&nbsp;forced service...</p>

<p>This argument misunderstands both the nature and purpose of exemptions as protections for religious beliefs from majority coercion.</p>

<p>The Supreme Court has repeatedly—and unanimously—rejected the claim that policies enacted to vindicate free-exercise rights by accommodating religious beliefs and practices violate the Establishment Clause... These Supreme Court rejections make sense, because the same First Amendment that prohibits the establishment of religion also expressly protects the free exercise of religion. It would be illogical to treat protections for religious exercise as establishing someone’s religion...</p>

<p>The argument against exemptions would be plausible if such laws only protected religious believers of one faith, or if the laws stipulated that religious interests should prevail in <em>every</em> case in which they competed with other interests and values. But the federal civil-rights law at issue in the <em>Hobby Lobby</em> case—the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—protects people of all faiths. Exemptions are not automatic, because the government is always permitted to show that it has compelling reasons to deny the exemption. Historically the government has often met this burden and won the case.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read the rest of the article: “<a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCsQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304914204579397170026645290.html&amp;ei=TeAwU93SH8TqoAT19YL4Bw&amp;usg=AFQjCNF-eO04YA6T1dCEEKKno-JV7GdGNA&amp;sig2=fuVJ6HbIeKhHSmrCS63yig&amp;bvm=bv.63587204,d.cGU" target="_blank">Religious Exemptions Are Vital for Religious Liberty</a>.”</p>

<p>(HT: <a href="https://twitter.com/DustinSteeve/status/448232963696627712" target="_blank">Dustin Steeve</a>)</p>
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title: Fred Sanders on Pagan vs. Biblical Propitiation
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 02/22/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/fred-sanders-on-pagan-vs-biblical-propitiation
content:
            <div> 
		<p>For people who aren’t familiar with Christianity, the word “propitiation”&nbsp;can bring a pagan concept to mind rather than a biblical one. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Deep-Things-God-Everything/dp/1433513153/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1393024937&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">Fred Sanders</a> outlines some of the differences between the two as part of a <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2014/02/20/pagan-propitiation-vs-biblical-propitiation/" target="_blank">series</a> Trevin Wax has been posting on different aspects of the atonement:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>In pagan propitiation, the gods need to be propitiated because they are grumpy and capricious. They don’t care much about humans except when something makes them angry; then they smite! And it’s up to humans to get busy doing the propitiating, to make up for whatever they’ve done that angered the gods. The humans find something that the gods like (sweets, or meat, or pain, or blood), and offer it as a bribe to calm down their wrathful deities.</p>

<p>But every aspect of biblical propitiation contrasts with the pagan kind.</p>

<ol>
	<li>First, consider why God requires propitiation: not because he’s moody or easily provoked, but because he is holy and just. God responds to sin with absolute consistency, and his “wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness”&nbsp;(<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Rom%201.18" target="_blank">Rom 1:18</a>).</li>
	<li>Second, consider who carries out biblical propitiation: not humans on their own initiative figuring out what God likes, but God himself declaring what kind of sacrifice he accepts, and then providing it. Even in the Old Testament, God takes credit for providing the blood of animal sacrifice (“I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement,”&nbsp;<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Leviticus%2017.11" target="_blank">Leviticus 17:11</a>).</li>
	<li>And third, consider what kind of sacrifice brings about biblical propitiation: not a bribe or something nice to tide him over. No, in the fullness of time, God fulfills the Old Testament symbolism by giving his own Son to die for us.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>

<p>Dr. Sanders brings this home with a little application:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>In daily life there is a constant temptation to ignore Christ as our God-given propitiation, and to seek other ways of cutting little deals with God, to curry his favor and appease his wrath, to give him something he’ll like so he��ll at least refrain from smiting us, and maybe even reward us with various blessings and goodies.</p>

<p>Don’t do this.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read the rest of his <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2014/02/20/pagan-propitiation-vs-biblical-propitiation/" target="_blank">post</a>.</p>
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title: Caring for the Sick
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 03/20/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/caring-for-the-sick
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Christians have been at the forefront of building hospitals and providing care for the sick for centuries.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>...It wasn’t until Constantine granted the first Edict of Toleration in AD 311, that Christians were able to give public expression to their ethical convictions and undertake social reform. From the fourth-century to present times, Christians have been especially prominent in the planning, siting and building of hospitals, as well as fundraising for them. Cities with significant Christian populations had already begun to change prevailing attitudes, and were already beginning to build hospices (guest houses for the sick and chronically disabled).</p>

<p>Stories of Christian caring had enormous impact, even before Constantine’s decree of toleration. Clement, a Christian leader in Rome at the end of the first century of the Christian era, records how the Christian community was already doing much to relieve the plight of poor widows. In the second century when plague hit the City of Carthage, pagan households threw sufferers onto the streets. The entire Christian community, personally led by their bishop, responded. They were seen on the streets, offering comfort and taking them into their own homes to be cared for. A few decades after Constantine, Julian, who came to power in AD 355, was the last Roman Emperor to try to re-institute paganism. In his Apology, Julian said that if the old religion wanted to succeed, it would need to care for people even better than the way Christians cared...</p>

<p>In AD 369, St Basil of Caesarea founded a 300 bed hospital. This was the first large-scale hospital for the seriously ill and disabled. It cared for victims of the plague. There were hospices for the poor and aged isolation units, wards for travelers who were sick and a leprosy house. It was the first of many built by the Christian Church.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>There’s a lot <a href="https://www.cmf.org.uk/publications/content.asp?context=article&amp;id=827" target="_blank">more about this history to read here.</a></p>
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title: Where Was God?
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 02/26/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/where-was-god-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>The images are sadly familiar. Buildings ripped from their foundations. Corpses mingled with debris. Parents and friends grieving for lost loved ones. Flowers and candles and makeshift memorials. New Orleans, Newtown, New York, Littleton.</p>

<p>In one sense tragedies like these will never be old news. And when new disasters inevitably arrive, the question on the lips of so many is an age old query: “Where was God?”</p>

<h2>One Wrong Answer</h2>

<p>One answer is not going to work: the picture of a broken-hearted God, victimized, agonizing over events that are out of His control.</p>

<p>This “finite God”&nbsp;view is Rabbi Harold Kushner’s answer in <em>Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?</em> Evil is bigger than God whose hands are tied by the laws of nature and the will of man. Limited in power, He weeps with us at a world out of control.</p>

<p>According to Kushner, this should bring us comfort. “God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies, helps by inspiring people to help,”&nbsp;he writes.[1]</p>

<p>Clearly, the God Rabbi Kushner has in mind is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the One who brought the universe into existence with a single thought. This is not the God of the Exodus or the empty tomb. A God equally victimized by the march of evil may commiserate with other victims, but He cannot inspire or rescue. He is not worthy of praise, prayer, or trust. Nor is there any real comfort to be gained from one so impotent.</p>

<h2>Another Wrong Answer</h2>

<p>But what alternative is there? How can anyone believe in God in the face of mind-numbing tragedy? The great 20th century British philosopher and atheist Bertrand Russell wondered how anyone could talk about God while kneeling at the bed of a dying child.</p>

<p>It is a powerful image. Like the three-word sound byte, “Where was God?,”&nbsp;it strikes many Christians dumb. How can anyone cling to the hope of a benevolent, powerful sovereign in the face of such tragedy?</p>

<p>They might consider Christian philosopher William Lane Craig’s response: What is the atheist Bertrand Russell going to say at the bed of that dying child—or, for that matter, at the funerals of thousands of dead in Katrina’s wake, or to the parents of 20 dead school children in Newtown, Connecticut, or to the families of 2,977 dead on 9/11? Too bad? Tough luck? That’s the way it goes? No happy ending, no silver lining, nothing but devastating, tragic, senseless evil?</p>

<p>No, that also won’t work for an important reason. In a world bereft of God, there are many ways to characterize hurricanes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, or malicious bloodletting: unpleasant, sad, painful, even ghastly.</p>

<p>Yet if God doesn’t exist, the one thing we can never do is call such human destruction “evil”&nbsp;or wanton murder “wicked.”&nbsp;If in virtue of these tragedies one concludes God doesn’t exist, then the carnage ceases to be morally tragic at all, if by that word we mean a genuine breach of goodness.</p>

<p>Judgments like these require some transcendent reference point, some way of keeping score. Words like “evil”&nbsp;or “tragic”&nbsp;are parasitic on a standard of moral perfection. C.S. Lewis pointed out that a portrait is a good or bad likeness depending on how it compares with the “perfect”&nbsp;original. But if there is no standard, then there is no “good”&nbsp;or “bad.”</p>

<p>“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust,”&nbsp;Lewis reasoned. “But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call something crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”[2]</p>

<p>Evil is spoiled goodness. That’s Lewis’s point. We already know this. Note the words we use to describe it: righteousness, morality, purity. Evil depends on the good. Where does such goodness come from, though?</p>

<p>This point was explored in the movie, “The Quarrel.”[3] The main characters, Hersh and Chaim, were boyhood friends who separated in a dispute over God and evil. Then came the Holocaust. Each thought the other had perished. After the war, they reunite by chance and immediately become embroiled once again in their boyhood quarrel.</p>

<p>Hersh, now a rabbi, offers this challenge to the secularist Chaim:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>If there’s nothing in the universe that’s higher than human beings, then what’s morality? Well, it’s a matter of opinion. I like milk; you like meat. Hitler likes to kill people; I like to save them. Who’s to say which is better?</p>

<p>Do you begin to see the horror of this? If there is no Master of the universe, then who’s to say that Hitler did anything wrong? If there is no God, then the people that murdered your wife and kids did nothing wrong.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>If there is no God, it’s hard to even begin making sense of the notions of evil or moral tragedy in an objective sense.[4] The events that trouble us are reduced to mere “stuff”&nbsp;that happens. There are different kinds of “stuff,”&nbsp;to be sure, some we like (Mother Teresa), and some we don’t (Newtown), but in a universe bereft of God it’s all reduced to “stuff”&nbsp;in the end.</p>

<p>We know better, though. Words like “wicked,”&nbsp;“tragic,”&nbsp;and “evil”&nbsp;are on the lips of everyone constantly. We cannot describe our daily experience of the world without them.</p>

<p>Yet the questions remain: Why doesn’t God intervene? Why is He inactive—apparently impotent—when He could restrain both wayward winds and wicked people? This protest rings hollow, though, because we don’t really want God to end evil, not all of it.</p>

<h2>Picking and Choosing Our Moral Tragedies</h2>

<p>Why does this question about God only come up with <em>magnum</em> tragedies—like a hurricane or a schoolyard massacre—or when we are personally stunned by deadly disease or financial ruin? What about the mass of evil that slips by us every day unnoticed and unlamented because <em>we are the perpetrators</em> of the evil, not its <em>victims</em>?</p>

<p>On December 14, 2012—the same day 26 were murdered, most of them children, at Sandy Hook elementary school—I wonder how many Americans were committing adultery around the country? What of the cumulative effect of the personal pain and destruction that resulted from all those individual acts of sin? What of the unplanned pregnancies (and subsequent abortions), the sexually transmitted diseases, the shame and embarrassment?</p>

<p>On August 30, 2005 a day when Katrina left so many homeless in the Gulf states, what of the children whose homes were broken through marriages destroyed by infidelity? What of the severed trust, the emotional wounding, the sting of betrayal, the shattered families? What of the traumatized children cast adrift emotionally, destined as adults to act out the anguish of these disloyalties?</p>

<p>One careless act of unfaithfulness leaves in its wake decades of pain and destruction and often generations of brokenness. And—to be sure—this evil was multiplied thousands of times over around the country on the same day the levees broke in Louisiana or when disaster struck in Connecticut.</p>

<p>I saw no outcry, though, no moral indignation in the local papers or national news because God permitted <em>this</em> evil. Why not? Because we don’t complain when evil makes us feel better, only when it makes us feel bad.</p>

<p>If the truth were known, we do not judge disasters based on unprejudiced moral assessment, but rather on what is painful, awkward, or inconvenient <em>to us</em>. We don’t ask, “Where is God?”&nbsp;when another’s pain brings us profit instead of loss.</p>

<p>Why? Because we don’t want God sniffing around the dark recesses of our own evil conduct. Instead, we fight intervention. We don’t really want Him stopping us from hurting others. We only cry “foul”&nbsp;when He doesn’t stop others from hurting us.</p>

<p>The problem of evil is much bigger than hundreds of drowned people or thousands of homeless. It includes all the ordinary corruptions that please us, the hundreds of small vices you and I approve of every day. It entails not only what offends <em>us</em>, but what offends <em>God</em>.</p>

<p>The answer to the question “Why doesn’t God stop the evil?”&nbsp;is the same answer to the question “Why doesn’t God stop me every time I do wrong?”&nbsp;There is a virtuous quality to human moral choice that both dignifies us and makes serious evil possible.</p>

<p>The rules God applies to a serial killer are the same rules He applies to you. If you want God to clean up evil, He might just say, “Okay, let’s start with you.”&nbsp;If you want Him to stop murderers, then you have to be just as willing to let Him stop you every time you do what is evil by His standards. And that covers a lot of ground. Most people won’t sit still for that.</p>

<p>Sometimes the consequences of our evil actions are long-lived. It’s hard to know how much has been spoiled by man’s initial rebellion. However, the prophecy that Adam would now encounter thorns and thistles is suggestive (Genesis 3:18). Ever since man has ventured forth from Eden, the world has been a dangerous place. All the forces of nature are wonderful things in their right place, but ominous foes in a world twisted by sin.</p>

<h2>What Should God Do?</h2>

<p>When people ask “Where was God?”&nbsp;I ask “What precisely do you expect God to do? If you were in His place, what would <em>you</em> do?”&nbsp;If you would use your power to stop evil, would you punish it or prevent it? Either choice presents you with problems.</p>

<p>One reason God doesn’t wipe out all evil immediately is that the alternative would be worse for us. This becomes evident by asking a simple question: If God heard your prayer to eliminate evil and destroyed it all at midnight tonight, where would you be at 12:01?</p>

<p>The discomfiting reality is that evil <em>deeds</em> can never be isolated from the evil <em>doer</em>. Our prints are on the smoking gun. Each one of us is guilty in some capacity, and we know it. That’s the problem.</p>

<p>While reading on the Littleton shooting several years ago, I stumbled upon a refreshing bit of honesty and moral clarity by John Hewitt in a piece entitled “Seeking to Make Sense Where There Is None.”&nbsp;Hewitt wrote:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>We would rather think of bad acts as the unfortunate consequences of discoverable and remedial social and personal conditions. Yet it is precisely the account we do not wish to believe that may best capture what happened in Littleton. The two dead members of the “Trenchcoat Mafia,”&nbsp;together with their fellows, may simply have <em>chosen evil</em> in circumstances where others choose to play football or to crave membership in the National Honor Society.[5] [emphasis added]</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Simply put, humans—you and I—make choices that cause evil. Consequently, any judicial action God might take today would pin us all under the gavel. When God wipes out evil, He’s going to do a complete job. C.S. Lewis soberly observed, “I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does... When the author walks on the stage the play is over.”[6]</p>

<p>No, God hasn’t banished evil from His kingdom—not yet. The Bible describes a future time when God will wipe away every tear and repair the effects of evil on the world. Men will no longer endure the ravages of wickedness or be victimized by bouts with nature. And no one will ever ask the question, “Where was God?”</p>

<p>Until then, though, God has chosen a different strategy, a better plan, one that’s moral on a higher level. It’s a plan that ultimately deals with evil, but allows room for mercy as well. It’s called forgiveness.</p>

<h2>The Patience of God</h2>

<p>God is waiting. Patience, not lack of goodness or lack of ability, stays God’s hand from writing the last chapter of human history. “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness,”&nbsp;Peter reminds us, “but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance”&nbsp;(2 Peter 3:9). God is patiently waiting for people to turn to Him.</p>

<p>Suffering, tragedy, and profligate evil now function as warning signals. Like the ache of a limb out of joint, the pain of living in a broken world tells us that something is amiss. If God took away the pain, we’d never deal with the disease. And the disease will kill us, sooner or later.</p>

<p>Why doesn’t God do something about evil? God <em>has</em> done something, the most profound thing imaginable. He has sent His Son to die for evil men. Because we are ultimately the source of evil, God would be entirely justified in punishing us. Yet He chose instead to offer mercy. He took the punishment due you and I and poured it out on His Son Jesus so He could make forgiveness available to anyone who asks.</p>

<p>God is not the author of evil. Neither is He incapable of responding nor unwilling to act. But His remedy for evil is not capricious. He doesn’t obliterate us, the offenders, with one angry blow. Instead He waits.</p>

<p>Bertrand Russell had nothing to say while kneeling at the bed of a dying child. He could have spoken of the patience and mercy of God. He ought to have mentioned the future perfection that awaits all who trust in Christ and experience God’s forgiveness. He might have remembered that a redemptive God “causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose”&nbsp;(Rom. 8:28). He may have considered the Gospel, the only source of hope for a broken world.</p>

<p>But Russell could not. As an atheist he had surrendered those resources. We can do better.</p>

<p>Our dilemma should not be why God allows evil. Instead, our wonder should be why He would pay such an incredible price to rescue us at all when we have rebelled so completely against Him.</p>

<p>When this reality grabs our hearts, we will get down on our knees and ask forgiveness instead of criticizing God for not doing enough.</p>

<h2>Putting Your Knowledge into Action</h2>

<ul>
	<li>First, be sympathetic to this problem. It hits all of us sooner or later, and sometimes with great force in very personal ways.</li>
	<li>Second, don’t let others leverage the problem of evil into an argument against God. It doesn’t work. Ask them how they would answer for evil if there were no God. Further, how would they answer the problem of good?</li>
	<li>Remember the Bertrand Russell challenge and William Lane Craig’s powerful response. It takes a liability and turns it into an asset.</li>
	<li>When someone asks “How does Christianity explain tragedy?”&nbsp;say “Christianity doesn’t <em>explain</em> it; Christianity <em>predicts</em> it. This is exactly what you’d expect to see if the Christian world view is true.”</li>
	<li>Explain that God’s answer to evil at the moment is not to destroy those who perpetrate evil—each one of us—but to patiently extend an offer of clemency, forgiveness through His Son.</li>
</ul>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1">Rabbi Harold Kushner, <em>When Bad Things Happen to Good People</em> (New York: Schocken, 1981), 140, quoted in Norman Geisler and William Watkins, <em>Worlds Apart</em> (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 203. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:2">C.S. Lewis, <em>Mere Christianity</em> (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 31. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:3">“The Quarrel,”&nbsp;directed by Eli Cohen, released 1991. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:4">Of course, relativistic morality—grounded in personal preference or cultural convention—fares just fine because it’s not a true moral system, but rather a denial of universal moral obligations. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:5">John P. Hewitt, “Seeking to Make Sense Where There Is None,”&nbsp;<em>Los Angeles Times</em>, April 23, 1999. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:6">Lewis, 66. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
</aside>
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title: His Weakness Glorifies God
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 02/19/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/his-weakness-glorifies-god
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I’ve written about the magnificence of 1 John 1:10, which frees us to glorify God’s grace by being <a href="https://www.str.org/blog/free-to-say-we-ve-sinned#.W6mNFRNKijQ" target="_blank">open about our sin</a>. But singer-songwriter <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Counting-Stars-Andrew-Peterson/dp/B003SPJ50A/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1392328018&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=counting+stars" target="_blank">Andrew Peterson</a> beautifully puts a human story to that theological idea in a <a href="http://www.rabbitroom.com/2012/03/what-i-learned-from-scc/" target="_blank">post</a> he wrote after going on tour with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Will-Steven-Curtis-Chapman/dp/B002O5Y25I/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1392327917&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=steven+curtis+chapman" target="_blank">Steven Curtis Chapman</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I’ve been in Nashville for 15 years now, and, well, you tend to hear less-than-flattering stories about folks from time to time (I’m sure there are a few about me floating around out there), but I have yet to hear one of those about Steven. What that might lead a rascal like me to conclude is that either a) Steven is so squeaky-clean he <em>must</em> be hard to like or b) he’s a complete wreck and he’s hiding it. I didn’t realize until this tour was underway that there’s a third option. Here it is: Steven <em>is</em> a wreck, he’s <em>not</em> hiding it, and because of the mighty presence of Jesus in his life, grace abounds to those around him.</p>

<p>It’s the great, confounding reversal of the Gospel of Jesus. If the word we preach is one of attainable perfection, of law, of justification by works, then when we fail, our testimony fails with it. But if we preach our deep brokenness and Christ’s deeper healing, if we preach our inability to take a single breath but for God’s grace, then our weakness exalts him and we’re functioning as we were meant to since the foundation of the world. Steven isn’t super-human. He’s just human. But what a glorious thing to be! An attempt on our part to be super-human will result only in our in-humanness—like a teacup trying to be a fork: useless. But if the teacup will just <em>be</em> a teacup, it will be filled. Humans were made (as was everything under the sun) for the glory of the Maker. Why should we try to be anything but fully human? Let God fill us up and pour us out; let him do what he will, let us be what we were meant to be. That gives us the freedom to sing about what’s <em>really</em> happening in our hearts without being afraid of sullying the good name of God. If our hearts are contending with the forces of darkness, clinging desperately to the hope of a Savior, then to sing boldly about the battle is no shame to us and all glory to our King.</p>

<p>The proof is in the pudding. Everyone I know in Nashville who knows Steven has said to me something like, “I love Steven. He’s a good man.”&nbsp;But from the first week of the tour I discovered that Steven isn’t a good man. He’s as sinful as the rest of us. He wears his weakness on his sleeve. He’s quick to share his pain and his struggle. That doesn’t make him mopey—he’s quick to share his joy, too. But what’s so wonderfully subversive about the Gospel is that our ability to honestly bear our grief and woundedness just makes room for God’s grace to cast light on all that shadow; it makes room for us to love each other. When we encounter that kind of grace we come away remembering not just the sin but, overwhelmingly, the goodness, and the grace, and we say, “I love that guy. He’s a good man.”&nbsp;What we’re really saying is, “I love that guy. God is so good.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Many years ago when I saw Steven Curtis Chapman in concert for the first time, I was struck by the fact that when I left, I was primarily thinking about how great God is, not how great SCC is. I loved him not because of his talent, but because he was a window to the glory of God. I wasn’t quite sure how he’d done it, but ever since then, I’ve wanted to be the same. I appreciate Andrew Peterson’s insights.</p>

<p>Please read the rest of his post <a href="http://www.rabbitroom.com/2012/03/what-i-learned-from-scc/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
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title: What’s Missing in Son of God
topic: Arts and Culture
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/02/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-s-missing-in-son-of-god
content:
            <div> 
		<p>The beginning of <a href="http://www.sonofgodmovie.com/home.html" target="_blank"><em>Son of God</em></a> was captivating. John tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”&nbsp;And then we’re hovering over the waters of creation. Jesus was there in the beginning, John continues to explain. He was there when Adam and Eve ate from the fruit. He was there when God rescued Noah from the flood. He was there when Moses spoke to the burning bush, when God parted the waters, when the Israelites were rescued from slavery. As we watch images from the history of God’s work in this world, we get a sense of Jesus’&nbsp;majesty. His power. His eternality. His central role in the entire sweep of history. “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.”&nbsp;A sense of anticipation and awe had me on the edge of my seat.</p>

<p>Then Jesus showed up.</p>

<p>And herein lies the problem for any filmmaker daring enough to take on the Bible: how to portray Jesus? How does one visually communicate the truth about who He is? How does one make Him stand out from the crowd? Unfortunately, this film took the same road as too many others: they made him tall, pretty, and “spiritual.”</p>

<p>This was highly distracting, and it set him apart for all the wrong reasons. People didn’t follow the Jesus of history because He appeared ethereal and spiritual (in the sense that we tend to mean when we say someone is “spiritual”&nbsp;today), they followed Him because of His authority, power, wisdom, and grace. Ethereal Jesus holds someone’s face and smiles—always smiles, real Jesus amazes people as He “teaches as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”&nbsp;He declares, “I am He,”&nbsp;and soldiers draw back and fall to the ground.</p>

<p>One can’t leave out this aspect of Jesus, for it’s only when this strength and authority is present that we truly feel the impact of the unexpected grace He shows to the weak, the hurting, and the sinners—when He welcomes little children and heals unclean women. It’s commonplace to see a mother stoop down to bless a child. It is quite shocking when the King of the universe takes time out of His day to do it. The greater the condescension, the more striking the love and kindness. When filmmakers show only kindness and leave out authority and strength, much is lost.</p>

<p>I had no sense of <em>Son of God’s</em> Jesus’&nbsp;authority—not even when he was turning over tables in the temple. It may simply be that having an actor play Jesus is an impossible task. But I think there was something else that was getting in the way here. I think the filmmakers were trying to convey a sense of piety (more and more so as the film went on), but they would have better served their audience by conveying a sense of <em>reality</em>.</p>

<p>Jesus was not a religious tale, He was real. He lived in Israel. He was Jewish. The “otherworldliness”&nbsp;the filmmakers attached to him—through camera work, his appearance, and the actor’s interpretation of what it means to be “spiritual”—had the effect of separating him from the more realistic human beings in the film (but again, not in the way that the Bible separates Him from others). The Pharisees said Jewish prayers in Hebrew in the film, why not Jesus? A Hebrew prayer when he blessed the fish and loaves would have rooted him in history. A solid appearance of him eating fish after the resurrection would have clarified the reality of the situation: Jesus was dead, then Jesus was alive—not in a “spiritual”&nbsp;sense, in a <em>real</em> sense.</p>

<p>But now comes the big question: why? Why his death and resurrection? Could anyone not already in the know answer that question after seeing this movie? I really appreciated that the film linked Jesus’&nbsp;death to the Passover sacrifice, but what is Passover? What is the sacrifice for? What does this mean for Jesus? For us? In the film, Jesus invites the disciples to “change the world”&nbsp;and “change their life.”&nbsp;There’s no real explanation of Jesus’&nbsp;death and resurrection, not even so much as a “given for you”&nbsp;after “this is my body.”</p>

<p>One could argue that the filmmakers were trying to stay within the Gospels, and the meaning of Jesus’&nbsp;death and resurrection isn’t expounded at length there (though even including a “this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins”&nbsp;would have been helpful). But when the movie returns to John on the Island of Patmos, and he tells us what ultimately happened to the disciples, why not give a clear declaration of the good news the disciples died for? I don’t say this because I think a Christian movie needs some sort of an altar call, I say this because I’m not sure the story makes sense without the gospel. I tried to imagine what a filmgoer who knew nothing about Christianity would think Jesus’&nbsp;message was, and the best I could come up with was, “Be kind to sinners.”&nbsp;I think I would be confused about why people died for that.</p>

<p><em>Son of God</em> wasn’t a poorly-made film, for the most part, and Christians will likely automatically fill in what’s missing as they watch. My hope for you is that you’ll be consciously aware of what’s missing so you can steer the conversations you have with friends and coworkers about the movie in a helpful direction—towards the compelling and real person and work of Jesus Christ.</p>

<p>For more details on the film, here’s a <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2014/02/28/son-of-god-the-burnett-and-downey-version/" target="_blank">review</a> by Ben Witherington.</p>

<p>[Note: The difficulty of writing about a movie is that I only get one shot at watching it. I can’t go back to check quotes or scenes, and it’s possible I missed something that would have been relevant for this review. I welcome corrections below.]</p>
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title: Think of the Mosaic Covenant Like a State Law
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/21/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/think-of-the-mosaic-covenant-like-a-state-law
content:
            <div> 
		<p>A caller on <a href="/w/hummingbirds-the-bible-and-witnessing-march-18-2014-" target="_blank">this week’s show</a> had a friend challenge him with <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deut+13%3A6-11&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Deuteronomy 13:6–11</a>. Shouldn’t Christians “surely kill”&nbsp;anyone who entices them to serve other gods, as that biblical law demands?</p>

<p>Greg responded by saying that the challenge is based on a misunderstanding of what Deuteronomy is:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The Mosaic Covenant is an agreement that God made with Israel; it is not an agreement God made with anyone else.... Nothing that is in the Mosaic Law applies to me as a Gentile <em>in virtue of</em> it being in the Mosaic Law. No command is incumbent upon me in virtue of being part of the Law.</p>

<p>Here’s the best way to characterize this: You and I both live in California. There is nothing in California law that applies to somebody living in Ohio. Ohio has its own statutes. Now, there is a statute against murder in California. Does that mean since I’m not in California, it’s okay for me to murder in Ohio? No, I’m not under the California statute, but I am under the Ohio statute.</p>

<p>And part of the reason is that there are a lot of rules that are in statutes that turn out to be the kind of rules that should apply in any situation in any state, and you’re going to find them repeated. But then there are also going to be laws and rules that are unique to that state’s situation.</p>

<p>Think of the Mosaic Covenant like a state Law. It was given to the people in that state for that period of time. We are in a different state now. We have a different covenant that applies to us (and that’s the New Covenant) and different moral obligations. We are not obliged by everything in the Mosaic Law. That was a set of civil obligations that were applicable to those people under that time. It was made between God, and Moses, and the Jews....</p>

<p>Does that mean we can go around murdering people because we’re not under the Mosaic Law? No, the obligation not to murder is a universal and should be in any Law....</p>

<p>[A person might say,] “Well, you’re just picking and choosing.”&nbsp;No, I’m not; I have a rationale why this doesn’t apply in the same way and why others might. And the things that do apply as universal moral obligations from the Mosaic Law are going to be repeated in the New Testament to Gentiles. These things are not repeated, because we are not under that theocracy. It’s just exactly like being in a separate state.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>To hear Greg’s full answer, listen <a href="/w/hummingbirds-the-bible-and-witnessing-march-18-2014-" target="_blank">here</a> (the question starts at 00:36). For a more lengthy discussion on the relationship between Christians and the Mosaic Law, see <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Questions-Christians-Biblical-Answers-Series/dp/0825438918/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1395186436&amp;sr=8-5&amp;keywords=tom+schreiner" target="_blank"><em>40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law</em></a> by Thomas Schreiner.</p>
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title: The S.L.E.D. Test
topic: Bioethics
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 03/13/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-sled-test
content:
            <div> 
		<p>The SLED Test is a simple argument against abortion.</p>

<p>The pro-life view is that the unborn are human beings just like you and me. That’s why it’s wrong to kill them. Although many abortion-choice advocates agree the unborn are human, they deny they are valuable human beings. They think this distinction justifies killing the unborn.</p>

<p>Often they use personhood language to express this view. They say the unborn might be human, but it’s not a person.</p>

<p>When confronted with this claim, ask a simple question: “What’s the difference between a human being and a human person?”&nbsp;They must answer this question. Why? They’ve just made the incredible claim that there are human beings that can be killed with impunity because they are not persons. What are their reasons for this view? What’s the difference between a born human and an unborn one that justifies killing the latter?</p>

<p>Abortion-choice advocates typically cite one or more characteristics they believe make a human being a person. Each of these characteristics fall under one of four categories. You can remember these categories with the acronym SLED: Size, Level of development, Environment, and Degree of dependency.</p>

<p>Although it’s true the unborn differs from a born human in these four ways, none of them is a relevant difference. None of them justifies killing the unborn. Consider how each category is irrelevant to human value.</p>

<p><strong>Size</strong>: The unborn is clearly smaller than a born human. It’s hard to reason how a difference in size, though, disqualifies someone from being a person. A four year-old is smaller than a fourteen year-old. Can we kill her because she’s not as big as a teenager? No, because a human being’s value is not based on their size. She’s still equally a person even though she differs in that characteristic. In the same way, the unborn is smaller than a four year-old. If we can’t kill the four-year old because she’s smaller, then we can’t kill the unborn because she’s smaller either.</p>

<p><strong>Level of development</strong>: The unborn is also less developed than a born human being. How does this fact, though, disqualify the unborn from personhood? A four year-old girl can’t bear children because her reproductive system is less developed than a fourteen year-old girl. That doesn’t disqualify her from personhood. She is still as equally valuable as a child-bearing teen. The unborn is also less developed than the four year-old. Therefore, we can’t disqualify her from personhood for the same reason we can’t disqualify the four year-old. Both are merely less developed than older human beings.</p>

<p><strong>Environment</strong>: The unborn is located in a different environment than a born human. How does your location, though, affect your value? Can changing your environment alter your status as a person? Where you are has no bearing on who you are. An astronaut who spacewalks in orbit is in a radically different environment than a person on the planet. No one could reasonably deny his personhood simply because he’s in a different location. Scuba divers who swim under water and spelunkers who crawl through caves are equally as valuable as humans who ride in hot-air balloons. If changing your environment can’t change your fundamental status, then being inside or outside a uterus can’t be relevant either. How could a 7-inch journey through the birth canal magically transform a value-less human into a valuable person? Nothing has changed except their location.</p>

<p><strong>Degree of dependency</strong>: The unborn is dependent upon the mother’s body for nutrition and a proper environment. It’s hard to see, though, how depending upon another person disqualifies you from being a person. Newborns and toddlers still depend upon their parents to provide nutrition and a safe environment. Indeed, some third-world countries require children to be breast fed because formula is not available. Can a mother kill her newborn son because he depends on her body for nutrition? Or, imagine you alone witnessed a toddler fall into a swimming pool. Would you be justified in declaring him not valuable simply because he depended on you for his survival? Of course not! Since the unborn depends on his mother in the same way, it’s not reasonable to disqualify his value either.</p>

<p>Notice that although toddler and teens differ from each other in the four SLED categories, we don’t disqualify toddlers from personhood. Since born and unborn humans differ in exactly the same ways, we can’t disqualify the unborn from personhood either.</p>

<p>The SLED tactic exposes the argument for abortion for what it really is: unjust discrimination. Abortion-choice advocates deny that all human beings are valuable and deserve protection. Which ones don’t qualify? The ones that are too small, not developed enough, in the wrong location, and are too dependent on other people. In other words, the human beings that satisfy the SLED Test’s criteria are the ones that don’t make the cut.</p>

<p>These four characteristics, though, are arbitrary and allow the strong to disqualify the weak, vulnerable, and defenseless. Sadly, history is crowded with similar examples. African Americans were victims of discrimination. They were a class of human beings that was disqualified from being valuable based on an arbitrary characteristic: their skin color. Jews were also were victims of discrimination. They were a class of human beings that was disqualified from being valuable based on an arbitrary characteristic: their ethnicity. Today, the unborn are victims of discrimination. They are a class of human beings that are disqualified from being valuable based on arbitrary characteristics: their size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency.</p>

<p>The pro-life position, on the other hand is an inclusive view. It says no human being—regardless of size, skin color, level of development, race, gender, or place of residence—should be excluded from the community of human persons. This view of humanity is inclusive and wide open to all, especially to those who are small, vulnerable, and defenseless.</p>
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title: Pioneering Women’s Education in China
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 03/06/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/pioneering-women-s-education-in-china
content:
            <div> 
		<p><a href="http://www.bu.edu/missiology/missionary-biography/a-c/bridgman-eliza-jane-gillett-1805-1871/" target="_blank">Eliza Bridgman’s</a> lifelong ambition was to be a missionary. She began her work in China in 1844. Over the course of her career, she founded school for girls in Shanghai and Peking, giving opportunities for young women who otherwise would have ended up as prostitutes, in forced labor, or starving. Her school in Peking eventually became part of Yenching University, one of the first Chinese universities.</p>

<p>You can<a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-february/world-missionaries-made.html" target="_blank"> read more</a> about a fascinating study about the positive long term affect proselytizing missionaries had on the cultures they served, in temporal terms as well as eternal. The pattern that emerges over time and across the globe is pretty astounding.</p>
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title: Is the Bible Wrong about Camels?
topic: History
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 02/14/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/is-the-bible-wrong-about-camels-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>According to Professor of Theology and Hebrew Dr. Andrew Steinmann in an <a href="http://issuesetc.org/2014/02/11/1-archaeologists-dispute-camels-in-genesis-dr-andrew-steinmann-21114/" target="_blank">interview</a> on “Issues, Etc.,”&nbsp;recent headlines like “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/science/camels-had-no-business-in-genesis.html?_r=0" target="_blank">Camels Had No Business in Genesis</a>”&nbsp;and “<a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/11/is-camel-discovery-the-straw-that-broke-the-bibles-back/" target="_blank">Will Camel Discovery Break the Bible’s Back?</a>”&nbsp;aren’t quite accurate. He says the problem isn’t as much with the archaeology as it is with the archaeologists’&nbsp;understanding of the Bible:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The Bible very clearly shows people from Mesopotamia and the Arabian Desert having camels early on, and we in fact know from other archaeological evidence in Iran (which doesn’t involve any Bible interpretation) that camels were domesticated long before Abraham’s time, which is about the first time camels are mentioned in the Bible. At least 1,000 years before Abraham, dromedary camels—the single hump ones—were domesticated, and Bactrian camels probably 500 years after that. So we know people in Iran did it, and it spread into Mesopotamia. We have good evidence from Mesopotamia that there were domesticated camels then.</p>

<p>What these archaeologists are doing, though, is when they read about somebody like Abraham having camels, they’re saying, “Aha! The Bible is saying that camels were widespread in Palestine during this period of time, and there’s no archaeological evidence for that.”</p>

<p>Well, indeed, there’s no archaeological evidence for widespread use of camels in Palestine at this time, but that’s not what the Bible is saying. What it <em>is</em> showing is that somebody who originally <em>came</em> from Mesopotamia, like Abraham, he did have some camels. And then the other mentions of camels in Genesis and in the early part of the Bible have to do with either people related to Abraham that were living in the Arabian Desert (for instance, the Ishmaelites...have camels when they come and buy Joseph and take him down to Egypt), or other peoples like that, associated with the Arabian Desert—the Amelekites...who live on the edge of the Arabian Desert are mentioned a number of times having camels. But there’s no mention of Israelites owning camels...</p>

<p>The Bible just doesn’t give any evidence for the <em>assumption</em> that these archaeologists are making that [the Bible says] there’s widespread use of domestic camels in Israel...</p>
</blockquote>

<p>When asked for a response to the charge that “what we’re seeing here is obvious evidence that someone’s been tampering with the text and unwittingly gave themselves away by putting camels in Abraham’s possession”:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>My response is just the opposite—that they show that they’re very accurate, because they confine it to people from Mesopotamia or the Arabian Peninsula. If this person was going to give himself away, you would expect [to see] him depicting the Canaanites having camels, or people like that. But he doesn’t say the Canaanites or the Phoenicians are making extensive use of camels.</p>

<p>And so by looking at the evidence in <em>particular</em>, and not just saying, “Well, Abraham has camels, so they must have been used all throughout Israel. Yeah, we don’t have any archaeological evidence for that”—well, that’s true, but if it’s only Abraham and people passing through that are using camels, well, then you wouldn’t expect to find a lot of camel bones there in the archaeological evidence during the period of Abraham or even later.</p>

<p>Again, it’s the problem of [the archaeologist’s] assumptions. He’s assuming that if camels are mentioned at all, the Bible must be wrong, rather than looking at the evidence and the distribution of where camels are mentioned, and then that reveals a lot more.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Listen to the rest of the <a href="http://issuesetc.org/2014/02/11/1-archaeologists-dispute-camels-in-genesis-dr-andrew-steinmann-21114/" target="_blank">interview</a>. For more information, see articles in <a href="https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&amp;article=858" target="_blank">Apologetics Press</a>, <a href="http://crossexamined.org/category/archaeology/" target="_blank">CrossExamined.org</a>, and <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/february-web-only/latest-challenge-bible-accuracy-abraham-anachronistic-camel.html?start=1" target="_blank">Christianity Today</a>.</p>
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title: I Take the Bible In Its Ordinary Sense
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 02/26/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/i-take-the-bible-in-it-s-ordinary-sense
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>The real question we face is not whether or not to take the Mosaic Law literally, but whether we are now under that same legal code.</em></p>

<p>In a <a href="http://www.str.org/articles/do-you-take-the-bible-literally-2" target="_blank">past letter</a> to you, I warned about the liability of simply answering yes to the question “Do you take the Bible literally?”&nbsp;Rather, I suggested, you could avoid confusion by saying, “I take the Bible in its ordinary sense,”&nbsp;or, “I take the Bible at face value.”&nbsp;Then I explained what I meant.</p>

<p>Since then, I have encountered another challenge along the same lines. Maybe you’ve heard it, too. It goes like this: In the Bible, homosexual activity was punishable by death (Leviticus 18:22-23 and 20:13). Therefore, any Christian who takes the Bible literally must advocate execution for homosexuals. If you don’t, then you are not taking the Bible literally, and no one else should, either.</p>

<p>Let’s start with a definition. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, the word “literal”&nbsp;means, “Taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or allegory, free from exaggeration or distortion.”</p>

<p>Now here’s our question: When Moses wrote the Law, did he expect the Jewish people to take those regulations literally?</p>

<p>Let me ask the same question another way. When an ordinance is passed in your local state (California, in my case), do you think the legislators intend you to understand the words of the regulation “in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or allegory, free from exaggeration or distortion?”</p>

<p>Of course they do. Legal codes are not written in figurative language allowing each citizen to get creative with the meaning. Moses meant it the way he wrote it.</p>

<p>But now, it seems, we’re stuck on the other horn of our dilemma. To be consistent, shouldn’t we currently campaign for the death penalty for homosexuals? Aren’t we obliged to promote execution for disobedient children and Sabbath-breakers, for that matter, both capital crimes under the Law?</p>

<p>The simple answer is, “No.”&nbsp;Just because God intends a biblical command to be taken literally, does not mean He intends it to be applied universally.</p>

<p>Consider this. Jesus told Peter to cast his net in deep water (Luke 5:4). That’s exactly what Peter did because he took Jesus’&nbsp;command literally, at face value. However, because Jesus’&nbsp;command to Peter was literal does not mean the same command applies to us. We’re not commanded to cast nets into deep water.</p>

<p>Here’s another way of looking at it. No matter what state you live in, the California legal codes are to be taken literally. But they don’t apply to you unless you live in California. In the same way, the words of the Mosaic Law, like those of all laws, are to be taken at face value by anyone who reads it. Yet only those under its jurisdiction are obliged to obey it.</p>

<p>The Jews in the theocracy were expected to obey the legal code God gave them. It is not the legal code God gave to gentiles, however. Therefore, even if the words are to be taken literally, this does not necessarily mean we must obey them now.</p>

<p>The real question we face is not whether or not to take the Mosaic Law literally, but whether we are now under that same legal code. We are not. Americans are not the nation of Israel living under the legal code the Mosaic Covenant. We are a mixture of peoples governed by a representative republic.</p>

<p>Though we may glean wisdom from the Law of Moses for our own legal codes, we are not obliged by Sinai since it was meant to organize the Jewish government. To suggest we are is a mistake. If anyone thinks otherwise, he is duty-bound to buy a net and throw it into deep water.</p>

<p>By the way, the reason Jesus wanted Peter to cast his net again after a day of fruitless fishing was to demonstrate His power by bringing in a miraculous catch that filled the boat. He then invited Peter to abandon his nets and become a fisher of men.</p>

<p>Just recently STR celebrated 20 years of training others to “fish”&nbsp;for men. As our team gathered together at our office to celebrate and reminisce, we had a chance to reflect on God’s faithfulness to us. We especially focused on the people who have served us so well over the years, generous people like you who have helped us get to where we are today.</p>

<p>The scope and magnitude of our work has increased over the years far beyond our expectations and in ways we never imagined. And our monthly financial challenges have increased at the same time.</p>

<p>If STR has touched your life in any way over this past decade and a half, would you let us know by sending us a gift today? It will help us launch the next 20-year stretch as we seek to extend God’s Kingdom for His glory.</p>

<p>In Christ,</p>

<p>Greg Koukl</p>
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title: How to Alleviate Poverty
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/18/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/how-to-alleviate-poverty
content:
            <div> 
		<p><a href="http://impact360institute.org/" target="_blank">Impact 360 Institute</a> recently had Jay Richards, author of the excellent <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Money-Greed-God-Capitalism-Solution/dp/0061900575/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1395102699&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=money%2C+greed%2C+and+god" target="_blank"><em>Money, Greed, and God</em></a>, speak on “<a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2014/03/06/how-to-end-poverty-in-ten-tough-steps/" target="_blank">How to End Poverty in Ten Tough Steps</a>.” He began by clarifying where the disagreement on poverty really lies:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I won’t spend a lot of time on the question of whether we should care about the poor. I take this for granted that this is a non-negotiable as Christians, that we are supposed to care about our fellow human beings. God cares about the poor, and he expects <em>us</em> to care about the poor....</p>

<p>[In the culture today,] we don’t actually argue about <em>whether</em> we should be concerned about the poor. In fact, atheists, and secularists, and liberals, and conservatives, we all actually agree on that point... What <em>do</em> we disagree on? We disagree on what to do about it....</p>

<p>What’s frustrating about this to me is that it would be one thing if we were disagreeing with how to develop cold fusion, or something like that.... That’s an understandable disagreement that people could have, because we have no idea how to do that, right? It’s unknown. But poverty, and poverty alleviation, and wealth creation are not unknowns. We actually <em>know</em> the answer to these questions. They’re tough, but we actually know what it is that causes cultures to prosper and what it is that prevents cultures from prospering....</p>

<p>So my question is, as Christians, if we’re supposed to care about the poor, and we’re supposed to care about the poor in the developing world, and we actually <em>know</em> the way in which cultures create wealth and alleviate poverty, why would we try something different? ... I think, as Christians, if we’re really serious about poverty alleviation, what we need to do is focus on the known steps.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Justin Taylor <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2014/03/06/how-to-end-poverty-in-ten-tough-steps/" target="_blank">summarizes</a> the ten steps cited by Dr. Richards:</p>

<blockquote>
<ol>
	<li>Establish and maintain the rule of law.</li>
	<li>Focus the jurisdiction of government on maintaining the rule of law, and limit its jurisdiction over the economy and the institutions of civil society.</li>
	<li>Implement a formal property system with consistent and accessible means for securing a clear title to property one owns.</li>
	<li>Encourage economic freedom: Allow people to trade goods and services unencumbered by tariffs, subsidies, price controls, undue regulation, and restrictive immigration policies.</li>
	<li>Encourage stable families and other important private institutions that mediate between the individual and the state.</li>
	<li>Encourage belief in the truth that the universe is purposeful and makes sense.</li>
	<li>Encourage the right cultural mores - orientation to the future and the belief that progress but not utopia is possible in this life; willingness to save and delay gratification; willingness to risk, to respect the rights and property of others, to be diligent, to be thrifty.</li>
	<li>Instill a proper understanding of the nature of wealth and poverty - that wealth is created, that free trade is win-win, that risk is essential to enterprise, that trade-offs are unavoidable, that the success of others need not come at your expense, and that you can pursue legitimate self-interest and the common good at the same time.</li>
	<li>Focus on your comparative advantage rather than protecting what used to be your competitive advantage.</li>
	<li>Work hard.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>

<p>Because economics is the study of human decisions, it’s unbelievably fascinating; and because economic policies have the power to either help or hurt real people, we need to know something about it. Watch the full lecture below.</p>

<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9" data-embed-id="87892509" data-styles="{&quot;width&quot;:&quot;100%&quot;}" style="width:100%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="embed-responsive-item" frameborder="0" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/87892509?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" tabindex="0"></iframe></div>
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title: Links Mentioned on the 3/18/14 Show
topic: Theology
author: Stand to Reason
date: 03/18/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/links-mentioned-on-the-3/18/14-show
content:
            <div> 
		<p>The following are links that were either mentioned on this week’s show or inspired by it, as posted live on the <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/STRtweets" target="_blank">@STRtweets</a> Twitter feed:</p>

<ul>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/videos/greg-koukl - -levitical-law#.Uyja0V7jzcF" target="_blank">Levitical Law</a> - Video by Greg Koukl</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Questions-Christians-Biblical-Answers-Series/dp/0825438918/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1395186436&amp;sr=8-5&amp;keywords=tom+schreiner" target="_blank">40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law</a> by Thomas Schreiner</li>
	<li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20171106100038/https://www.ariel.org/mbs006e.htm" target="_blank">The Law of Moses and the Law of Christ</a> by Arnold Fruchtenbaum</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/When-Baby-Dies-Ronald-Nash/dp/0310225566/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1395188724&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=when+a+baby+dies+ron+nash" target="_blank">When a Baby Dies</a> by Ron Nash</li>
	<li><a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=CD113" target="_blank">The Heathen and the Unknown God</a> by Greg Koukl</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/videos/greg-koukl - -what-about-those-who-ve-never-heard#.Uyjl3l7jzcF" target="_blank">What About Those Who’ve Never Heard?</a> - Video by Greg Koukl</li>
	<li><a href="https://welltrainedmind.com/a/classical-education/?v=7516fd43adaa" target="_blank">What Is Classical Education</a> by Susan Wise Bauer</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-iWitness-Doug-Powell/dp/0805495819/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1395190461&amp;sr=8-1-fkmr0&amp;keywords=iresurrection+doug+powell" target="_blank">Resurrection iWitness</a> by Doug Powell</li>
	<li><a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2014/03/the-truth-about-arizonas-religious-freedom-bill.html" target="_blank">The Truth about Arizona’s Religious Freedom Bill</a> by Amy Hall</li>
	<li><a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK126" target="_blank">Decision Making and the Will of God</a> by Garry Friesen</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/articles/theistic-evolution-designed-by-chance#.Uyk9Xl7jzcF" target="_blank">Theistic Evolution: Designed by Chance?</a> by Greg Koukl</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.str.org/w/theistic-evolution-drifting-toward-darwin" target="_blank">Drifting towards Darwin</a> by Greg Koukl</li>
</ul>

<p>Listen to <a href="http://www.str.org/podcasts/weekly-audio/hummingbirds-the-bible-and-witnessing-march-18-2014#.UynOjl7jzcE" target="_self">today’s show</a> or download any <a href="http://www.str.org/explore#&amp;format=PodcastEntry" target="_blank">archived</a> show for free. (Find links from past shows <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/podcast-links/" target="_blank">here</a>.)</p>

<p>To follow the Twitter conversation during the live show (Tuesdays 4:00-7:00 p.m. PT), use the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%23strtalk" target="_blank">#STRtalk</a>.</p>
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title: The Truth about Arizona’s Religious Freedom Bill
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/13/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-truth-about-arizona-s-religious-freedom-bill
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Now that the dust has settled on the hysteria surrounding SB 1062, Arizona’s failed religious freedom bill (widely dubbed the “anti-gay bill”&nbsp;by the press), Ramesh Ponnuru <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372984/cross-purposes-ramesh-ponnuru" target="_blank">clarifies the controversy</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Political journalists tend to accept social liberals’&nbsp;framing of issues, their terminology, and their claims, and to believe the worst about social conservatives. In the Arizona debate, these tendencies manifested in widespread reports that the bill authorized businesses to refuse to serve gay people who wanted to be their customers and in the labeling of the legislation as “anti-gay.”</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/372136/nine-biased-headlines-arizona-veto-alec-torres" target="_blank">Headlines</a> in the <em>New York Times</em>, the <em>Washington Post</em>, <em>USA Today</em>, and many other outlets either used that label or repeated that claim. In their limited defense, the proximate reason for the legislation does have to do with homosexuality: Conservatives were concerned that without the law, business owners who object to same-sex marriage might be forced to take actions they regard as participating in, facilitating, or condoning it. They were moved by cases such as one in neighboring New Mexico, where a wedding photographer was punished for refusing to serve a same-sex commitment ceremony.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/51leg/2r/bills/sb1062p.pdf" target="_blank">The legislation itself</a>, however, did not mention gays, homosexuality, or same-sex marriage, and largely tracked the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA): a law that was enacted by large bipartisan majorities that included many liberals and was signed by President Clinton in 1993 [and was not prompted by a situation dealing with sexual orientation]. It would not have authorized business owners to turn away gay customers—which, by the way, is something Arizona law already allows but that businesses have not been eager to do. It would not even have authorized bakers to refuse to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, which is a scenario both sides of the debate often mentioned. It would have given those bakers a claim in court but not guaranteed their success with it.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>It’s a significant point to say that sexual orientation in Arizona is <em>not</em> a protected category. In other words, it’s currently not illegal to discriminate against a person because of his or her sexual orientation. This means that the nightmare picture people were painting of the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/18/gays-lesbians-kansas-bill-religious-freedom-christians-column/5588643/" target="_blank">“Jim Crow”&nbsp;situation</a> this bill would create was ridiculous. As <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2014/02/27/in-arizona-gop-shows-how-easily-it-will-cave-on-religious-liberty/" target="_blank">Brandon McGinley put it</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>That dystopian Arizona with LGBT folks sitting at different lunch counters and forced out of jobs en masse and booted from retail stores? You know, the one promised by LGBT activists, and then by Marriott and Intel and Yelp, and then, implicitly, by John McCain and Mitt Romney and Laura Ingraham? Under Arizona law, that could exist right now. And yet it doesn’t. Because Arizona isn’t full of hordes of cackling Christians plotting an LGBT apartheid state.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Further, in situations such as that of the photographer mentioned above, people aren’t refusing to serve people because of their sexual orientation, they’re refusing to participate in an event that goes against their conscience (see “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/refusing-to-photograph-a-gay-wedding-isnt-hateful/284224/" target="_blank">Refusing to Photograph a Gay Wedding Isn’t Hateful</a>”&nbsp;in <em>The Atlantic</em>).</p>

<p>So what did the bill <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372984/cross-purposes-ramesh-ponnuru" target="_blank">actually do</a>?</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The Arizona bill differed from the federal law [RFRA], and clarified previous state law, <a href="http://www.azpolicy.org/media-uploads/pdfs/Letter_to_Gov_Brewer_re_Arizona_RFRA.pdf" target="_blank">in two ways</a>. It explicitly allowed businesses, not just individuals, to make conscience claims in court, and it explicitly allowed the claims to be used against private litigants. Whether the federal law applies in these cases is disputed.</p>

<p>Neither difference would seem to justify labeling the Arizona bill as “anti-gay,”&nbsp;given that almost nobody labels the federal law that way.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>During the height of the controversy, 11 law professors (liberals and conservatives) tried to <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/critics-of-arizona-bill-are-trying-to-deceive-you-liberal-and-conservative-law-professors-tell-gov-brewer-115273/" target="_blank">cut through the “anti-gay”&nbsp;rhetoric</a> to <a href="http://www.azpolicy.org/media-uploads/pdfs/Letter_to_Gov_Brewer_re_Arizona_RFRA.pdf" target="_blank">explain the bill</a> to Gov. Jan Brewer, but the pressure from <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2014/02/28/dumb-uneducated-and-eager-to-deceive-media-coverage-of-religious-liberty-in-a-nutshell/" target="_blank">the media’s spin</a> on the bill proved to be too much to overcome, and it was vetoed.</p>

<p>Legislation like <a href="http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/51leg/2r/bills/sb1062p.pdf" target="_blank">SB 1062</a> will come up again, so hopefully we can learn from this situation and help people think about it more clearly next time.</p>
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title: What Does It Mean to Avoid Every Appearance of Evil?
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/01/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-does-it-mean-to-avoid-every-appearance-of-evil-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Dan Wallace <a href="http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2014/02/avoid-every-appearance-of-evil-3/" target="_blank">says</a> the King James translation of 1 Thessalonians 5:22 (“abstain from all <em>appearance</em> of evil”) has led to a misunderstanding of the text, causing many to say that if <em>anyone</em> thinks a particular action is wrong (e.g., drinking, smoking, playing cards, etc.), then no Christian ought to engage in it.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Does it really mean that even if something looks like it’s evil to some, we can’t enjoy it? Hardly.</p>

<p>The Greek text really should be translated, abstain from every form of evil. There is a genuine correspondence between form and the state of being evil: that is, stay away from evil things. But the reason that form (or, in the KJV, appearance) was used is because Paul is speaking about false doctrine. This verse, in fact, was more often attributed to Jesus than to Paul in the early church, suggesting that Paul got this line from the Lord and that it was one of the sayings which for some reason didn’t make it into the gospels, but was nevertheless an authentic saying of Jesus. It was used with literal reference to coins. Thus, to abstain from every form of evil was to avoid counterfeit teaching. Further, in the context, it seems clear that Paul is speaking about false teaching. Verses 19-22 read as follows:</p>

<p>Do not quench the Spirit;</p>

<p>Do not despise prophecies;</p>

<p>But examine all things: cling to the good, abstain from every form of evil.</p>

<p>In context, Paul is saying that false teaching should be avoided, but true teaching should be what believers follow. They shouldn’t be duped, shouldn’t become gullible, but must test prophets and see whether they are from the Lord. They need to examine all these teachings and cling to the good and throw out the bad.</p>

<p>If we look at the broader context of the New Testament as a whole, we see that Paul was certainly not speaking about avoiding every appearance of evil in <a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/1%20Thessalonians%205" target="_blank" title="1 Thessalonians 5">1 Thessalonians 5</a>. His own mission was governed by the mantra, I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I might save some (<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/1%20Cor%209.22" target="_blank" title="1 Cor 9.22">1 Cor 9.22</a>).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>In a similar <a href="http://thegoodbookblog.com/2011/may/13/avoid-every-appearance-of-evil-toppling-a-faulty-m/" target="_blank">post</a>, Walt Russell breaks down the passage this way:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>“Do not quench the Spirit”&nbsp;(v. 19) (the general exhortation);</p>

<p>“Do not despise prophetic utterances” (v. 20) (the specific negative aspect of the exhortation).</p>

<p>“But examine everything carefully”&nbsp;(v. 21) (the contrasting positive aspect of the exhortation);</p>

<p>“hold fast to that which is good”&nbsp;(v. 22) (what to do with good prophecies after examining);</p>

<p>“abstain from every form of evil”&nbsp;<em>or</em>&nbsp;“every evil form <em>of utterance”</em>&nbsp;(v. 23) (what to do with the evil prophetic utterances).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Wallace concludes:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>To wield <a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/1%20Thess%205.22" target="_blank" title="1 Thess 5.22">1 Thess 5.22</a> as a weapon to restrict a believer’s personal freedom is against the general tenor of the New Testament and of the Lord’s life in particular. Ironically, to avoid every appearance of evil is far more in keeping with the Pharisees’&nbsp;model of righteousness than with Jesus’!</p>
</blockquote>
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title: The Bruno Martyr Myth
topic: History
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/12/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-bruno-martyr-myth
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Cosmos</em> (a new version of Carl Sagan’s series) has <a href="http://www.fox.com/watch/183733315515" target="_blank">begun</a>, bringing with it discussions across the Internet about Giordano Bruno, who is often wrongly hailed as a martyr of science.* From <a href="http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/cosmos_revives_083061.html#sthash.cxpz4hvT.dpuf" target="_blank">Jay Richards</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Many viewers may have been baffled that so much time would be spent [in the opening episode of the series] on Bruno, an Italian Dominican friar born in 1548 who was neither a scientist nor credited with any scientific discovery. Why is that? It’s because he’s the only one with even a passing association with a scientific controversy to be burned at the stake during this period of history. As a result, since the 19th century, when the mythological warfare between science and Christianity was invented, Bruno has been a leading character.</p>

<p>But there’s one problem: Bruno’s execution, troubling as it was, had virtually nothing to do with his Copernican views. He was condemned and burned in 1600, but it was not because he speculated that the Earth rotated around the sun along with the other planets. He was condemned because he denied the doctrine of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and transubstantiation, claimed that all would be saved, and taught that there was an infinite swarm of eternal worlds of which ours was only one. The latter idea he got from the ancient (materialist) philosopher Lucretius... Yet a documentary series about science and our knowledge of the universe fritters away valuable airtime on this Dominican mystic and heretic, while scarcely mentioning Copernicus, the Polish guy who actually wrote the book proposing a sun-centered universe.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Humphrey Clarke at <a href="http://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2009/02/giordano-bruno-martyr-for-science-and.html" target="_blank">Quodlibeta</a> explains the religious views that got Bruno into trouble:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Bruno was a follower of a movement called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetism" target="_blank">Hermetism</a>, which was a cult that based its beliefs on documents which were thought to have originated in Egypt at the time of Moses. These writings were linked with the teaching of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoth" target="_blank">Egyptian God Thoth</a>, the God of learning and had arrived in Italy from Macedonia in the 1460s. To followers of this cult, Thoth was known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_Trismegistus" target="_blank">Hermes Trismegitus, or Hermes the thrice great</a>. The Egyptians worshiped the sun and it is possible <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus" target="_blank">Nicolaus Copernicus</a> himself was influenced by Hermetism to put the sun at the centre of the universe. For instance, he wrote in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_revolutionibus_orbium_coelestium" target="_blank">De revolutionibus</a> that:</p>

<p><em>At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. For in this most beautiful temple, who would place this lamp in another or better position than that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time? For, the sun is not inappropriately called by some people the lantern of the universe, its mind by others, and its ruler by still others. [Hermes] the Thrice Greatest labels it a visible god, and Sophocles’&nbsp;Electra, the all-seeing.</em></p>

<p>Subscribers to Hermeticism included such high profile figures as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_II_of_Spain" target="_blank">Phillip II of Spain</a>, and the writings were generally tolerated by the Catholic Church. Bruno’s ’dangerous idea’&nbsp;was to take the view that the Egyptian religion was the true faith and that the church should return to these old ways; which they were none too pleased about.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Bruno wasn’t a martyr for science:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>As the work of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_A._Yates" target="_blank">Frances Yates</a> in the 1970s showed,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno_and_the_Hermetic_Tradition" target="_blank"> far from being a martyr for science, Bruno was a martyr for magic</a>. The full list of charges were as follows:</p>

<p><em>Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers. Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ’s divinity and Incarnation.Holding erroneous opinions about Christ. Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass. Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity. Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes. Dealing in magics and divination. Denying the Virginity of Mary</em>....</p>

<p>There is no evidence that <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno" target="_blank">his support for Copernicanism</a> featured in the trial at all, but Bruno was a keen advocate of the sun centred universe because it fitted so well with the Egyptian view of the world... The theme of his ’<a href="http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/brunoiuw0.htm" target="_blank">On the Infinite Universe and Worlds</a>’&nbsp;is not Copernicanism, of which he had a rather flawed technical understanding, but <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism" target="_blank">pantheism</a>, a theme also developed in his ’<a href="http://www.esotericarchives.com/bruno/umbris.htm" target="_blank">On Shadows of Ideas</a>’, and which would come to influence <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza" target="_blank">Baruch Spinoza</a>.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>And here’s the key point:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>It was his personal cosmology which informed his espousal of Copernicus, not the other way around. Bruno and his trial made a big splash at the time and all his ideas were tarred with the same brush. It is possible if it hadn’t been for Bruno, Copernicanism would not have made such a splash with the authorities and Galileo might not have been persecuted.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Bruno’s view of the universe was primarily a result of his <em>religious</em> views, as was his conviction and death at the hands of the Inquisition (as <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christophers/2014/03/cosmos-may-get-science-right-but-it-gets-church-history-wrong/" target="_blank"><em>Cosmos</em> acknowledged</a>). As the conclusion of the episode’s segments on Bruno tells us:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Bruno was no scientist. His vision of the cosmos [received in a dream, according to the episode] was a lucky guess, because he had no evidence to support it. Like most guesses, it could well have turned out wrong.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The people of Bruno’s time were rejecting his unsubstantiated revelation, not science. Certainly they should not have burned him at the stake, but neither should they have been swayed by his views.</p>

<p>More on <em><a href="http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/cosmos_with_nei083031.html" target="_blank">Cosmos</a></em>. More on <a href="http://www.christianapologeticsalliance.com/2014/03/11/cosmos-giordano-bruno-and-getting-it-right/" target="_blank">Bruno</a> (and the alleged “banned books”&nbsp;<em>Cosmos</em> said he “dared to read”), his <a href="http://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2009/02/giordano-bruno-martyr-for-science-and.html" target="_blank">beliefs</a>, and the <a href="http://christandpopculture.com/on-the-anniversary-of-his-execution-what-can-we-learn-from-the-first-martyr-of-science/" target="_blank">origin of the myth</a>. Watch the two segments on Bruno <a href="http://www.fox.com/watch/183733315515" target="_blank">beginning at 16:38</a> (available until May 4) and read a <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godandthemachine/2014/03/dishonestcosmos/" target="_blank">refutation</a>. And if you’d like to hear how <em>Cosmos’s</em> concern that “expressing an idea that didn’t conform to traditional belief could land you in deep trouble”&nbsp;doesn’t just apply to Bruno’s time, see <a href="http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/cosmos_with_nei083031.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>

<p>*<em>Cosmos</em> depicts Bruno as more of a hero of <em>free thought</em> than of science (yes, as odd as it seems, they celebrate his religious vision as free thought gloriously challenging the scholars’&nbsp;understanding of the cosmos), but since the “science martyr”&nbsp;idea is still widespread, this post is intended to address that misconception.</p>
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title: The Gospel’s Impact on Cannibals
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 02/13/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-gospel-s-impact-on-cannibals
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I love the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Peace-Child-Unforgettable-Primitive-Treachery/dp/0830737847/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1392249887&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=peace+child" target="_blank"><em>Peace Child</em></a>, written by Don Richardson, a missionary who went with his wife and baby to a tribe in Western New Guinea that highly celebrated treachery, murder, and cannibalism (e.g., when they first heard about Jesus’&nbsp;life and death, they thought Judas was the hero of the story). <em>Peace Child</em> is an account of how the Richardsons were finally able to convey the value of the gospel to the Sawi people, and the story is an incredible one.</p>

<p>When Richardson and his sons returned to visit the tribe after decades, they saw the effect that knowing Christ had had on the entire society. Excerpts from a video documenting their visit describe some of the changes (the full video is posted below):</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Normally, you wouldn’t hear someone say, “It’s great to see so many old people.”&nbsp;Disease took its toll. Death from warfare took its toll. But now, to come back and see that there are just throngs among the crowds of people—throngs of people with gray hair, and old enough that they have trouble walking along the trail—that’s a special joy...</p>

<p>When we came for the first time, there was a lot of enmity between the tribes. Coming back after so many years, to see the relationship between these people, where there’s really almost no line of demarcation between them—they’re just treating each other like brothers and sisters, they love each other, they share the leadership in the church services, and they’re intermarrying. So the walls that have been broken down by virtue of the gospel’s impact are very, very obvious...</p>

<p>A SAWI VILLAGER (interpreted): When [the missionaries] came years ago, [we] were still living in darkness. God’s word has been planted here, the gospel has been received, this place is full of peace. It’s a safe place to live. We’re very blessed. I want to give thanks to God because the gospel came here. And I want you to know that when you leave on the airplane tomorrow, that we’re going to stay faithful to the gospel as long as we live. It’s everything to us.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>In C.S. Lewis’s <em>The Silver Chair</em>, Aslan (the Christ figure) says, “I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms.”&nbsp;And so Jesus has. We have no idea of the scope of the <a href="https://www.str.org/blog/the-true-story-of-christian-missionaries#.W6mPoRNKijQ" target="_blank">blessings</a> that Christianity has brought the world, but stories like this one give us a hint.</p>

<p>(HT: Justin Taylor—<a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2014/02/04/returning-home-to-ex-cannibals/" target="_blank">Returning Home to Ex-Cannibals</a>)</p>

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title: How Being Part of a Local Church Shapes Us
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/05/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/how-being-part-of-a-local-church-shapes-us
content:
            <div> 
		<p>In response to Donald Miller’s <a href="http://storylineblog.com/2014/02/13/church-anywhere-and-everywhere/" target="_blank">explanation</a> of why he’s not a regular attender of a local church, Jared Wilson argued for the importance of it, <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/gospeldrivenchurch/2014/02/13/what-we-talk-like-when-we-talk-about-god/" target="_blank">saying</a> that local church involvement plays an important role in confronting our tendency to reject authority and embrace an unhealthy individualism:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I think a lot of the rejections in evangelicalism today of God’s sovereignty and biblical infallibility are not unrelated to the more recent conversations about the need to attend regular local church services... I think it’s because we don’t want anyone being the boss of us, and because doctrines like biblical infallibility (and biblical perspicuity) and experiences like church services are too restrictive, too conforming, too narrow a space for “me to be me”...</p>

<p>Certainly one can be self-centered inside a church gathering, but the church gathering is nevertheless where all the sinners ought to be at the appointed time, smack-dab in the middle of a congregational experience <em>specifically organized against the idolatry of personal preference</em>. Not just because God says to do it—although that’s reason enough—but because it is good for us to have our singular voice lost in the sea of corporate praise and it is good for us to shut our social-media-motor-mouths for a bit and hear “Thus saith the Lord.”&nbsp;We should go to church—not mainly, but nevertheless—<em>because</em> it confronts and stunts our spiritual autonomy and individualism. We should go lest we become Cainites, saying “I’m not my brother’s keeper.”&nbsp;Or reverse Cainites, “My brothers aren’t my keepers.”</p>

<p><em>Of course</em> most of us prefer to worship at the First Church of Hanging Out With My Friends at The Coffee Shop. <em>Of course</em> the more elite of us prefer to worship at My Own Speaking Engagements Community Church. Because, we believe, we “learn better”&nbsp;when we’re the ones doing the talking.</p>

<p>But something happens when you stop submitting to the communal listening of congregational worship and start filling the air with your own free range spiritual rhetoric. Your talk of God starts to sound less like God. He starts sounding like an idea, a theory, a concept. He stops sounding like the God of the Bible, the God who commands and demands, the God who is love but also holy, gracious but also just, <em>et cetera</em>. He begins to sound less like the God “who is who he is”&nbsp;and more like the God who is as you like him...</p>

<p>Awe and reverence. Authority and submission. Proclamation and supplication. Command and obedience. We fear these dynamics because we fear losing our selves, but we know <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+16:25&amp;version=HCSB" target="_blank">what Jesus said to do to find yourself</a>. If what Jesus says is true, maybe saving reverence for God is lost in the refusal to put one’s self in positions of difficulty, vulnerability, self-denial. Maybe seeking to find our own true path away from the “stifling confines”&nbsp;of the “traditional church”&nbsp;has actually taken us out of the garden of worship and into the wilderness, right into the rubble of Babel in fact.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read the rest of his <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/gospeldrivenchurch/2014/02/13/what-we-talk-like-when-we-talk-about-god/" target="_blank">post</a>.</p>
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title: Kolodny: I Will Dance on Traditional Marriage’s Grave
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 02/25/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/kolodny-i-will-dance-on-traditional-marriage-s-grave
content:
            <div> 
		<p>This isn’t the first time a proponent of same-sex marriage has been <a href="/w/same-sex-marriage-won-t-be-enough" target="_blank">open</a> about her ultimate goal of destroying marriage, but it’s certainly one of the most straightforward. Carina Kolodny writes in “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carina-kolodny/marriage-equality-is-dest_b_4823812.html" target="_blank">Marriage Equality Is Destroying ’Traditional Marriage,’&nbsp;and Why That’s a Good Thing</a>”:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>To the enemies of marriage equality:...</p>

<p>For years and years I’ve strategically bit my tongue.</p>

<p>Had I not, I would have sided with you. I would have agreed with you. Marriage equality will, in time, fundamentally destroy “traditional marriage,”&nbsp;and I, for one, will dance on its grave.</p>

<p>It’s not a terribly difficult conclusion to draw.</p>

<p>As same-sex couples marry, they will be forced to re-imagine many tenets of your “traditional marriage.”&nbsp;In doing so, they will face a series of complicated questions... As questions continually arise, heterosexual couples will take notice—and be forced to address how much “traditional marriage”&nbsp;is built on gender roles and perpetuates a nauseating inequality that has no place in 2014...</p>

<p>So yes, I told a white lie while soldiering on toward this inevitable outcome. I bit my lip in favor of dignity and equality...</p>
</blockquote>

<p>It’s Kolodny’s view that the existence of genderless marriages will introduce new patterns of living as a couple and new ways of getting children (or not having them at all) that opposite-sex marriages will begin to emulate. I think she’s correct that this will happen, but I disagree that it’s something to celebrate.</p>

<p>Kolodny is specifically hoping for a rejection of all gender roles (which has its own problems, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/magazine/does-a-more-equal-marriage-mean-less-sex.html?_r=0" target="_blank">apparently</a>); but ignoring the objective differences between men and women—and disconnecting marriage from the comprehensive union between them that creates new life—will have serious consequences beyond just this. Ryan Anderson has been arguing for a while now that the result of leaving behind the opposite-sex component of marriage will be a breakdown of the three major aspects of marriage: <a href="/w/ryan-anderson-what-is-marriage-" target="_blank">monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanency</a>. Since a same-sex union and its public consequences are different from an opposite-sex union (as it’s not a type of union that naturally produces children), the needs and concerns of those in same-sex unions are different, which means the ideas that naturally arise as to how to manage those unions will also be different. Along these lines, it comes as no surprise to discover that “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29sfmetro.html?_r=1&amp;" target="_blank">monogamy is not a central feature for many</a>”&nbsp;of their relationships.*</p>

<p>And while these changes to marriage will happen to suit the preferences of those who <em>aren’t</em> part of an opposite-sex union, the new perspective will (as Kolodny happily claims), change the way <em>everyone</em> views marriage, and children will be the ones to suffer; for the institution that emerged to give stability to the unique union that creates them will have been destroyed.</p>

<p>In the end, the results of divorcing marriage and children from complementary biology will include unprecedented <a href="/w/privatize-marriage-" target="_blank">government intrusion</a>, increasingly dubious <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/371682/fda-moving-toward-ok-3-parent-embryos-wesley-j-smith" target="_blank">technological practices</a>, the viewing of children as <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2014/02/19/the-brave-new-world-of-same-sex-marriage/" target="_blank">commodities</a>, serious <a href="/w/inherent-legal-difficulties-in-same-sex-marriage" target="_blank">legal complications</a>, and the unethical <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/359823/forced-caesareans-india-surrogacy-clinic-wesley-j-smith" target="_blank">use</a> of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/336598/renting-wombs-india-exploits-powerless" target="_blank">women’s</a> <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/04/egg-donors-and-human-trafficki" target="_blank">bodies</a>. Indeed, these results are already underway. This isn’t something to be happy about.</p>

<p>*From the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29sfmetro.html?_r=1&amp;" target="_blank">New York Times</a>: “A study...is offering a rare glimpse inside gay relationships and reveals that monogamy is not a central feature for many. Some gay men and lesbians argue that, as a result, they have stronger, longer-lasting and more honest relationships. And while that may sound counterintuitive, some experts say boundary-challenging gay relationships represent an evolution in marriage—one that might point the way for the survival of the institution.”</p>
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title: We’re Not Good at Estimating Our Goodness
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 02/12/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/we-re-not-good-at-estimating-our-goodness
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Here’s an interesting <a href="http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/02/jailed-criminals-think-they-are-kinder.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BpsResearchDigest+%28BPS+Research+Digest%29" target="_blank">study</a> with theological implications:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[A] team led by <a href="http://www.southampton.ac.uk/psychology/about/staff/cs2.page" target="_blank">Constantine Sedikides</a> has surveyed 85 incarcerated offenders at a prison in South East England about their prosocial traits. The inmates were aged 18 to 34 and the majority had been jailed for acts of violence and robbery...</p>

<p>Compared with “an average prisoner”&nbsp;the participants rated themselves as more moral, kinder to others, more self-controlled, more law-abiding, more compassionate, more generous, more dependable, more trustworthy, and more honest. Remarkably, they also rated themselves as higher on all these traits than “an average member of the community”, with one exception—law-abiding. The prisoners rated themselves as equivalent on this trait relative to an average community member.</p>

<p>Sedikides and his team say these results show the better-than-average effect cannot be explained by the fact that most participants are in fact better than average. In this case, they said there was “good reason to assume that the average non-prisoner is more honest and law abiding than the average prisoner.”</p>

<p>Past research (<a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.64.2655&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf" target="_blank">pdf</a>) on intellectual performance has shown that it is weaker performers who most over-estimate their own ability. Sedikides and his colleagues wondered if their new results add to this pattern, and raise the possibility of a more general tendency for those with especially poor skills or detrimental behavioural habits to lack insight into their own person.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I encountered this once, years ago, when I came across a blog post written by an incarcerated murderer, wherein he mentioned he was “a good person.”&nbsp;I was stunned—not because of how wrong that particular person obviously was, but because at that moment I realized just how deep the <em>human</em> capacity for self-deception is. And I recognized that I and everyone around me were included in that sobering realization.</p>

<p>That moment changed the way I understood our sin and God’s holiness forever. Whenever anyone claims our sins don’t deserve Hell, I think of that murderer. We have no reason to think we’re not as deluded as he is about what we deserve. We compare ourselves with the people around us who engage in a similar level of sin, and like that murderer, we feel pretty good about ourselves. But here’s what will happen when we finally see things the way they objectively <em>are</em>—and by “things,”&nbsp;I mean both God and ourselves:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Woe is me, for I am ruined!</p>

<p>Because I am a man of unclean lips,</p>

<p>And I live among a people of unclean lips;</p>

<p>For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. (Isaiah 6:5)</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The article quoted above says that “the prospects for helping [people who overestimate themselves] (and for rehabilitating prisoners) is not promising.”&nbsp;The prospects for helping them spiritually are similarly bleak. Who asks for a pardon when he doesn’t think he needs one? Who sees salvation as gracious when he thinks he deserves it? Who sees God as good when he thinks he’s being unjustly condemned?</p>

<p>Our understanding of our sin and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Holiness-God-R-Sproul/dp/0842339655/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1392158697&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank">God’s holiness</a> is crucial. It’s also impossible for us to apprehend even remotely accurately on our own. But with God all things are possible. Our hope is in the Holy Spirit, who “<a href="/w/the-holy-spirit-s-job" target="_blank">convicts the world</a> concerning sin and righteousness and judgment”—a great and terrible service, without which none of us would ever see ourselves, see God, <a href="/w/free-to-say-we-ve-sinned" target="_blank">be reconciled to Him</a>, and enjoy Him forever.</p>

<p>(HT: <a href="https://twitter.com/joecarter/status/432920581009195008" target="_blank">Joe Carter</a>)</p>
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title: Plantinga Interview: Is Atheism Irrational?
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 02/11/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/plantinga-interview-is-atheism-irrational-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Philosopher Alvin Plantinga made a few quotable points in an interview posted by the New York Times on <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/is-atheism-irrational/?_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;smid=tw-share&amp;_r=0" target="_blank">Sunday</a>.</p>

<p>On the claim that lack of evidence for theism is evidence for atheism:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism.</p>

<p>In the same way, the failure of the theistic arguments, if indeed they do fail, might conceivably be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism. Atheism, like even-star-ism, would presumably be the sort of belief you can hold rationally only if you have strong arguments or evidence.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>On whether or not the existence of imperfections in the world is evidence against God:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I suppose your thinking is that it is suffering and sin that make this world less than perfect. But then your question makes sense only if the best possible worlds contain no sin or suffering. And is that true? Maybe the best worlds contain free creatures some of whom sometimes do what is wrong. Indeed, maybe the best worlds contain a scenario very like the Christian story.</p>

<p>Think about it: The first being of the universe, perfect in goodness, power and knowledge, creates free creatures. These free creatures turn their backs on him, rebel against him and get involved in sin and evil. Rather than treat them as some ancient potentate might—e.g., having them boiled in oil—God responds by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that human beings might once more be in a right relationship to God. God himself undergoes the enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked, ridiculed, beaten and crucified. And all this for the sake of these sinful creatures.</p>

<p>I’d say a world in which this story is true would be a truly magnificent possible world. It would be so good that no world could be appreciably better. But then the best worlds contain sin and suffering.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>On the atheist argument that “we no longer need God to explain the world”:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Some atheists seem to think that a sufficient reason for atheism is the fact (as they say) that we no longer need God to explain natural phenomena—lightning and thunder for example. We now have science.</p>

<p>As a justification of atheism, this is pretty lame. We no longer need the moon to explain or account for lunacy; it hardly follows that belief in the nonexistence of the moon (a-moonism?) is justified. A-moonism on this ground would be sensible only if the sole ground for belief in the existence of the moon was its explanatory power with respect to lunacy. (And even so, the justified attitude would be agnosticism with respect to the moon, not a-moonism.) The same thing goes with belief in God: Atheism on this sort of basis would be justified only if the explanatory power of theism were the only reason for belief in God. And even then, agnosticism would be the justified attitude, not atheism.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>On the problem with believing in both materialism and evolution:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[I]f there are only material entities, then atheism certainly follows. But there is a really serious problem for materialism: It can’t be sensibly believed, at least if, like most materialists, you also believe that humans are the product of evolution... The belief that both materialism and evolution are true...can’t rationally be held.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read the rest of the <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/is-atheism-irrational/?_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;smid=tw-share&amp;_r=0" target="_blank">interview</a> to find out why.</p>
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title: The End of Apologetics?
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 02/04/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-end-of-apologetics-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>James Rochford has written a thorough <a href="http://www.evidenceunseen.com/theology/book-reviews/a-critical-review-of-myron-penners-the-end-of-apologetics/?utm_content=bufferf754a&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer" target="_blank">review</a> of a new book by Myron Penner titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/End-Apologetics-The-Christian-Postmodern/dp/0801035988/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1391204174&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank"><em>The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context</em></a>. I call your attention to it because it’s a good reminder that postmodern Christianity is still being advocated out there, and the many quotes from the book provided by Rochford in his review serve as a useful refresher course on the postmodern perspective.</p>

<p>These are a few of Rochford’s main objections to Penner’s book:</p>

<ul>
	<li>Penner ignores the biblical texts that support Christian apologetics</li>
	<li>Penner denies the importance of reason and truth</li>
	<li>Penner claims that apologetics are abusive</li>
	<li>Penner seeks to replace a correspondent view of truth with an “edification view”</li>
	<li>Penner exaggerates the inability of language to communicate truth</li>
	<li>Penner mischaracterizes his opponents in their character and beliefs</li>
</ul>

<p>Here’s an example of Penner’s characterization of apologetics, which bears no resemblance to the rich conversations I’ve had with people about Christianity:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The lesson of apologetic violence is that there is more than one way to deny Christ in modernity. There is the straightforward way of the atheist...or it may be done indirectly, perhaps even with sincerity, by a Christian who uses the objective truths of Christianity to do things that are themselves unloving and unedifying. (pp. 162-163)</p>
</blockquote>

<p>“Apologetic violence”? Again, all of this sounds more to me like theoretical ideas Penner has learned in a classroom, rather than what he’s experienced in conversations with real human beings who don’t know Christ. The use of apologetics has enabled me to be much better at drawing out and understanding another person’s particular view, at explaining my own beliefs more clearly, at understanding who God is and helping others to see Him. And I can’t count the number of people I’ve met (including myself) for whom God used apologetics to draw them to Himself.</p>

<p>And yet, postmodernists insist the opposite is true, so it’s a good idea to understand their perspective. Read the full <a href="http://www.evidenceunseen.com/theology/book-reviews/a-critical-review-of-myron-penners-the-end-of-apologetics/?utm_content=bufferf754a&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer" target="_blank">review</a>.</p>
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title: Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 02/08/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/do-christians-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for February 2014</em></p>

<p>Christians believe in the one, true God. They believe He is all-knowing, all-powerful, the creator of the universe, and the only one deserving of worship. Muslims also claim to worship one God, who they assert is all-knowing, all-powerful, and the creator of the universe. Do both Christians and Muslims worship the same God?</p>

<p>While most Muslims claim we worship the same God, Christians are divided on the question. On the one hand, it seems straightforward that the God of Islam and Christianity are different, based on their characterizations in the Bible and the Qur’an. On the other hand, we know there’s only one God who exists—who is actually “out there.”&nbsp;When a Christian and Muslim pray, there’s only one God who can possibly hear both prayers. Therefore, it seems that both religions are praying to the same God.</p>

<p>How are we to make sense of these different views?</p>

<p>We need to recognize that “God”&nbsp;is not God’s name. It’s more like the title of a position. The position is a <em>what</em>, but the person who fills that position is a <em>who</em>.</p>

<p>It’s helpful to think of it as a public office. The president, for example, is the title of a position, but a unique person occupies that office and fulfills its duties.</p>

<p>In the same way, God is the title of the position or office. Both Christians and Muslims believe in the same <em>what</em>—a God whose duties include things like creating, receiving worship, and judging. They differ on who they believe is the person who occupies that position. Muslims believe that person is Allah and Christians believe it is Yahweh.</p>

<p>Now that we recognize the difference between the title of the position of God and the person who occupies that position, it makes sense to mention the differences between the respective persons. Allah is Unitarian (a single essence in one person), while Yahweh is Trinitarian (one essence, but in three persons). The Qur’an claims that Allah has no son, while the Bible says that Jesus is the Son of God. Allah is transcendent, meaning he is separate from his creation. Although Yahweh is transcendent, He is also immanent, which means He enters into His creation and reveals Himself (e.g. Jesus becoming flesh).</p>

<p>These differences aren’t merely incidental, they’re central to each religion’s concept of the person who occupies the office of God. The difference is so significant that Christians consider it heresy to deny God’s Trinitarian nature, and Muslims consider it blasphemy to affirm it.</p>

<p>This clarification seems to make sense of the relationship of God in Islam and Christianity. Yes, both religions believe in the same <em>what</em> (God), but believe in a different <em>who</em> (the person who fulfills the office of God).</p>

<p>In addition to this explanation, however, the answer to whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God can be determined with two simple questions: Do Christians worship Jesus as God? Yes. Do Muslims worship Jesus as God? No. Therefore, Christians and Muslims don’t worship the same God because they don’t both worship Jesus.</p>

<p>If Jesus appeared on the streets of Detroit tomorrow, Christians would bow down and worship Him. However, no Muslim would bow down and worship Jesus. That’s because they would be committing the sin of shirk—the moral crime of worshiping someone other than God. This is the most grievous and unpardonable sin in Islam. When a Christian worships Jesus, however, they are performing a noble act of devotion. Given this stark contrast, it’s hard to imagine how we’re talking about the same God.</p>

<p>[For more, see this <a href="http://www.str.org/blog/do-muslims-and-christians-worship-the-same-god-video#.UuhICPbTnGJ">video</a> where I discuss this question.]</p>
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title: Privatize Marriage?
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/14/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/privatize-marriage-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Should the government “get out of the marriage business”? Jennifer Roback Morse explains the public function of marriage in “<a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/04/5069/" target="_blank">Privatizing Marriage Is Impossible</a>”:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Marriage is society’s primary institutional arrangement that defines parenthood. Marriage attaches mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. A woman’s husband is presumed to be the father of any children she bears during the life of their union. These two people are the legally recognized parents of this child... This is an intrinsically social, public function of marriage that cannot be privatized...</p>

<p>If no children were <em>ever</em> involved, adult sexual relationships simply wouldn’t be any of the state’s business. What we now call marriage would be nothing more than a government registry of friendships. If that’s all there were to marriage, privatizing it wouldn’t be a big deal...</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Why wouldn’t private contracts between couples be enough?</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Disputes that arise between the contracting parties must be resolved by an overarching legal authority. Let’s face it: that overarching legal authority always will be some agency of the government. “Getting the government out of the marriage business”&nbsp;amounts to refusing to define marriage on the front end. But the state will end up being involved in defining what counts as a valid marriage or parenting contract, on the back end, as it resolves disputes. We cannot escape this kind of state involvement.</p>

<p>No-fault divorce provides an analogy. No-fault divorce allows one party to end the marriage bond for any reason or no reason. In effect, the state redefined marriage by removing the presumption of permanence. Marriage became a temporary arrangement rather than a permanent union of a man and a woman. No-fault divorce was supposed to increase personal freedom.</p>

<p>But the result of this legal change has been state involvement in the minutiae of family life, as it resolves disputes over custody, visitation, and child support. Family courts decide where children go to school, or to church. I’ve even heard of a family court judge choosing a teenaged-girl’s prom dress because the divorced parents couldn’t resolve the issue...</p>

<p>Furthermore, “leaving marriage to the churches”&nbsp;is a fantasy. At this point in history, churches are not the ultimate legal authority for anything. There is exactly zero chance that the state will permit religious law to be the legal authority for its members on issues such as custody, visitation, and child support.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>(Dr. Morse continues her argument in “<a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/04/5071/" target="_blank">Privatizing Marriage Will Expand the Role of the State</a>”&nbsp;and “<a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/04/5073/" target="_blank">Privatizing Marriage Is Unjust to Children</a>.”)</p>

<p>The book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Marriage-Woman-Defense/dp/1594036225" target="_blank"><em>What Is Marriage</em></a> (Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and Robert George) agrees that “where marriages never form or easily break down, the state expands to fill the domestic vacuum by lawsuits to determine paternity, visitation rights, child support, and alimony,”&nbsp;and it adds this:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>But the less immediate effects are even more extensive. As absentee fathers and out-of-wedlock births become common, a train of social pathologies follows, and with it greater demand for policing and state-provided social services. Sociologists David Popenoe and Alan Wolfe’s research on Scandinavian countries shows that as marriage culture declines, the size and scope of state power and spending grow.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The state has a clear interest in marriage, and its involvement can’t be avoided.</p>
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title: A Former Pastor Tries Out Atheism
topic: Christian Living
author: Brett Kunkle
date: 01/22/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/a-former-pastor-tries-out-atheism
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I’m all for creating spaces in which people can doubt safely. <a href="http://www.str.org/blog/don%E2%80%99t-just-doubt-your-faith-doubt-your-doubts#.Us73xP2lQzg" target="_blank">I’ve even written about it</a>. But can the doubting process be pushed to an absurdity? Well, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-j-bell/a-year-without-god_b_4512842.html" target="_blank">I think it just has</a>.</p>

<p>Ryan Bell, a former pastor and adjunct professor at a Christian college and seminary, is giving atheism a try:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>“I’m making it official and embarking on a new journey. I will ’try on’&nbsp;atheism for a year. For the next 12 months I will live as if there is no God. I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration, refer to God as the cause of things or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else’s circumstances.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Bell is interviewed about the experiment <a href="http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunrise/video/watch/20841395/faith-less/" target="_blank">here</a>. He even has his own website to document the journey: <a href="http://yearwithoutgod.com/" target="_blank">YearWithoutGod.com</a>. Unfortunately, I think Bell’s journey is misguided.</p>

<p>First, it seems obvious that raising doubts and questions about one’s Christianity is not the same thing as actually trying on and living out the beliefs of an entirely antithetical worldview. It’s like having struggles in my marriage, and rather than go to counseling, I decide to “try on”&nbsp;bachelorhood for a year. “Honey, for the next 12 months I will live as if there is no marriage here. I will not talk to you, I will not go out on dates with you, refer to you as the cause of home-cooked meals or clean laundry or hope that you might intervene in any of my affairs.”&nbsp;Guess where that journey ends? In divorce. Similarly, does anyone think Bell’s experiment will have any other ending but God expelled from his life?</p>

<p>Our approach to doubt should be one of openness, but also of caution. We should create safe spaces for people to get their doubts out on the table and grapple with them. However, we must not doubt God lightly or haphazardly. Doubt can lead you into deeper waters of trust in God, but doubt can also drown all remnants of faith too. And if Christianity is true, the consequences are eternal. Therefore, when it comes to our views about fundamental reality, our questions should cause us to think them out and reflect deeply <em>before</em> we start living out an entirely different worldview. Thankfully, God has equipped us with a rational mind to do just that.</p>

<p>Second, as Bell tries on atheism, will he follow those beliefs to their logical conclusions? According to atheism, God does not exist (and no, <a href="http://askquestions.tv/brett-kunkle-do-christians-bear-the-burden-of-proof-for-our-claims-about-truth/" target="_blank">I reject atheists’&nbsp;attempts to redefine atheism as a <em>lack</em> of belief</a> rather than bite the bullet and accept their own knowledge claim). Rather, the universe we inhabit is one incredible uncaused accident that certainly did not have us in mind, and biological life is simply concerned with survival and reproduction. Yes, those ideas have consequences, one of which J. Warner has recently highlighted in his post, “<a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2014/01/the-inevitable-consequence-of-an-atheistic-worldview.html" target="_blank">The Inevitable Consequence of An Atheistic Worldview</a>.”&nbsp;Here’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&amp;v=noP4it-QLBE" target="_blank">another</a>. And here’s a <a href="http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=12&amp;article=2515" target="_blank">whole bunch more</a>. So, is Bell going all the way in this journey? Will he lean fully into <a href="http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-absurdity-of-life-without-god" target="_blank">the absurdity of life without God</a>? Or will he do what many atheists do and live on borrowed capital from a Christian worldview, which has the intellectual resources to sustain objective meaning and morality? If Bell doesn’t attempt to live out the logical consequences of atheism, he won’t really get the full taste of life without God, and thus, his assessment will be inadequate.</p>

<p>Well, if Ryan Bell is misguided in his journey of doubt, are there other ways of doubting that are better or more helpful? Yes, I think we can actually doubt <em>well</em>. Think about it, what’s the purpose of doubting? The end goal should be the discovery of truth. And there are better ways to find the truth than trying on atheism. If you struggle with doubt, don’t follow Ryan Bell’s lead. Gary Habermas is a much better guide. His free online book, <a href="http://www.garyhabermas.com/books/dealing_with_doubt/dealing_with_doubt.htm" target="_blank"><em>Dealing With Doubt</em></a>, will give you greater insight into the nature and causes of doubt and offer wise counsel as you travel your own journey of doubt.</p>
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title: Ensor, Piper, and Chan on Fighting to End Abortion
topic: Bioethics
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/29/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/ensor-piper-and-chan-on-fighting-to-end-abortion
content:
            <div> 
		<p>This is the interview Scott Klusendorf recommended on <a href="http://www.str.org/podcasts/weekly-audio/scott-klusendorf - -make-the-pro-life-case-persuasively-and-winsomely-january-21-2014#.UuaeKfbTnGI" target="_blank">last week’s show</a>, and I echo his recommendation. It’s a discussion between John Ensor (Scott’s co-author on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Life-Answering-Making-Saving/dp/1619701170/ref=sr_1_2_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1390357403&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=klusendorf" target="_blank">Stand for Life: Answering the Call, Making the Case, Saving Lives</a>), Francis Chan, and John Piper on the impact of graphic pictures, how teaching their congregations about human dignity and abortion glorifies God and His grace, the need for pastors to have courage on this issue and fight the temptation of a subtle loss of boldness, and how to preach about issues like this one within the full counsel of God.</p>

<p>Hearing about this subject from the perspective of a pastor glorifying God and caring for his congregation adds a depth and richness to this topic that will round out your understanding of abortion, the people who have suffered from it, and the gospel. Pass it on to your pastors and friends.</p>

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title: Sub-Optimal Design?
topic: Science
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/13/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/sub-optimal-design-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Bill Pratt <a href="http://www.toughquestionsanswered.org/2013/07/08/why-is-the-argument-from-poor-design-simply-atheism-of-the-gaps/" target="_blank">responds</a> to atheists who claim that the sub-optimal design of biological organisms argues against the existence of the Christian God:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I am an electrical engineer who has been designing integrated circuits (IC) for 20 years, either personally or through managing other engineers. I am extremely familiar with IC design. Over the years, I have often heard young engineers, who did not design a particular IC, criticize the design of that IC by saying it is sub-optimal, that they could do a better job. I have then seen these same engineers eat crow when they finally talk to the original designer and discover the <em>constraints</em> that original engineer was under when he designed the IC and the <em>purposes</em> for which he designed the IC.</p>

<p>It is <em>impossible</em> to judge a design as optimal or sub-optimal without knowing the <em>purposes of the designer</em> and without knowing the <em>constraints</em> the designer faced during the design. Young engineers just assume that they know both when they look at somebody else’s design. After being embarrassed a few times, they usually drop this approach and gain some humility.</p>

<p>I see the atheist who uses the argument from poor design in the same light. Biological organisms are incredibly complex and they operate in an environment that is massively complex. Our current knowledge of biological organisms and of all the earth’s diverse ecosystems is in its infancy...</p>

<p>Here is the problem for the atheist. Like the young IC designer, they are in a <em>very poor position</em> to judge whether biological organisms are optimally designed or not. Each year, scientists discover <em>new purposes</em>, or functions, for biological organisms, and each year scientists discover <em>more constraints</em> within which biological organisms must function.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://www.toughquestionsanswered.org/2013/07/08/why-is-the-argument-from-poor-design-simply-atheism-of-the-gaps/" target="_blank">Read more</a> from Pratt about why this move by atheists is really just “atheism of the gaps.”</p>
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title: A Proverb a Day—Mentoring Letter February 2014
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 02/10/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/a-proverb-a-day-mentoring-letter-february-2014
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>If I have only a short time to read, Proverbs is where I turn first. Every day that I do, I feel like my foundation is being shored up.</em></p>

<p>February 1, 2014</p>

<p>There’s nothing original about reading a chapter of Proverbs a day. Thirty-one days in a month (roughly); 31 chapters in the book. Easy. In fact, it’s so obvious, it’s easy to overlook.</p>

<p>Don’t. Very little in my life has yielded such rewards with such little effort.</p>

<p>Here’s my system. First, I don’t read an entire chapter each day. It’s just too much of a good thing. Like eating a pound of chocolate in one sitting, the wonder wears off quickly from over-exposure.</p>

<p>Instead, I choose the chapter matching the date, then read the first half on odd numbered months (January, March, etc.) and the second half on even months (February, April, etc.) Simple.</p>

<p>I don’t manage it every day, but I do get to it often. If I have only a short time to read, Proverbs is where I turn first. Every day that I do, I feel like my foundation is being shored up. If I miss a day, I don’t try to catch up. I just start with the current day’s reading. No worries.</p>

<p>At only 16 verses (on average) at a sitting, it’s not burdensome. Even so, I don’t hurry. I read slowly enough to give thought to each line, as if seated before the master himself taking lessons (“Hear, my son, your father’s instruction...”&nbsp;1:8).</p>

<p>I don’t try to plumb the depths of every verse, either. Rather, I’m alert for the bits of counsel that seem meaningful for me at the moment. There’s always a couple of thoughts that are relevant for me on any given day. Then I ponder their lessons.</p>

<p>Some proverbs are almost like riddles and the parallel thoughts (the lines above or below your verse) are often key to piecing together the puzzle. When I make a discovery that strikes close to home, I pray. I nurture it carefully with a thoughtful petition.</p>

<p>Sometimes the guidance offered is general: “My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent”&nbsp;(1:10), “In the abundance of counselors there is victory”&nbsp;(24:6), or, “The one who guards his mouth preserves his life”&nbsp;(13:3). Other times, a proverb gives very precise direction: “Abandon the quarrel before it breaks out”&nbsp;(17:14), “Do not love sleep, or you will become poor”&nbsp;(20:13), and, “Do not associate with a man given to anger...or you will learn his ways”&nbsp;(22:24-25).</p>

<p>A word of warning: Proverbs are not promises. They are short (usually), pithy sayings giving insight into how life works on balance. Life takes odd turns, but generally “luck”&nbsp;favors the prudent.</p>

<p>Here’s how I know. Though proverbs aren’t promises, the book itself offers assurances for those who are students of its wisdom:</p>

<p>He who listens to me shall live securely and will be at ease from the dread of evil (1:33). Then you will discern righteousness and justice and equity and every good course (2:9). Discretion will guard you, understanding will watch over you, to deliver you from the way of evil (2:11-12a). For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you... So you will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man (3:2, 4).</p>

<p>Wow. What else pledges such rewards?</p>

<p>And here’s a bonus for parents. Since I’m always on the lookout for simple ways to invest my spiritual life into the lives of my girls, when I can, I walk my nine-year-old, Abby, through a session after I’ve finished my own musing.</p>

<p>First, I have her use the formula to locate our passage for the day (“So I can learn to do it myself, right Papa?”). Though we share the reading task, I have her read aloud the verses I think will be most meaningful for her.</p>

<p>Then I invite—and guide—her reflection. “What do you think Solomon was getting at here, honey?”&nbsp;I don’t ask what it means to her (that’s the relativist’s question), but rather what lesson the teacher is trying to convey. Only then can we talk about application.</p>

<p>It’s a modest habit—pondering a handful of proverbs a day—but what a payoff. And if you have growing children, all the better. There is hardly anything this simple that can pay such big dividends in your life or in the lives of those in your family.</p>

<p>The more you acquaint yourself with Solomon’s instruction, the more trends stand out, like the persistent emphasis on imparting knowledge to the young. Since they are naïve and untutored, they are vulnerable.</p>

<p>It’s why STR has always sought to train youth as well as adults, and why this month we want to send you a copy of Brett Kunkle’s DVD, “Who’s Waiting for Your Kids.”&nbsp;Brett carefully assesses the current challenge to our children, then maps a strategy for meeting it. It’s our gift to you for your gift to STR this month.</p>

<p>Will you provide a gift of any amount this month to help us to reach yours and future generations?</p>

<p>When you send your support, be sure to ask for “Who’s Waiting for Your Kids.”&nbsp;It’s our way of saying thanks, and helping you “train up a child in the way he should go.”</p>

<p>Warmly and gratefully,</p>

<p>Gregory Koukl</p>
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title: Love Requires Wrath against Evil
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 02/01/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/love-requires-wrath-against-evil
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf wrote in his book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=vsGTyxEZ1mcC&amp;pg=PT247&amp;dq=miroslav+%22I+used+to+think+that+wrath+was+unworthy+of+God%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=mY_pUt_qCsPZoASlioHQBw&amp;ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=miroslav%20%22I%20used%20to%20think%20that%20wrath%20was%20unworthy%20of%20God%22&amp;f=false" target="_blank"><em>Free of Charge</em></a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isn’t God love? Shouldn’t divine love be beyond wrath? God is love, and God loves every person and every creature. That’s exactly why God is wrathful against some of them. My last resistance to the idea of God’s wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. <em>My</em> villages and cities were destroyed, <em>my</em> people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry. Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century, where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandparently fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators’&nbsp;basic goodness? Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who <em>wasn’t</em> wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful <em>because</em> God is love.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>For more on God’s wrath and love, see “<a href="https://www.str.org/blog/god-solved-the-justice-grace-problem#.W6mQWBNKijQ" target="_blank">God Solved the Justice/Grace Problem</a>”&nbsp;and “<a href="https://www.str.org/blog/how-tim-keller-made-peace-with-the-wrath-of-god#.W6mQrxNKijQ" target="_blank">How Tim Keller Made Peace with the Wrath of God</a>.”</p>

<p>(HT: White Horse Inn’s interview with Paul Copan on “<a href="http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2014/01/12/whi-1188-is-god-a-moral-monster/" target="_blank">Is God a Moral Monster?</a>”)</p>
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title: What Does Christ’s Resurrection Mean for Us?
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 02/05/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-does-christ-s-resurrection-mean-for-us-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I’ve been asked a few times about the meaning of Jesus’&nbsp;resurrection: Why is it so celebrated if our sins were paid for on the cross? What did it accomplish? Why was it necessary? While there are a variety of responses to this (Jesus’&nbsp;victory over death, an affirmation of His deity, a taste of the coming redemption of our bodies, etc.), in this post I’ll focus on what we learn about the work of Christ in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hebrews+7-10&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Hebrews 7–10</a>, where the ministry of the Levitical priests of the Mosaic Covenant is compared with “the more excellent ministry”&nbsp;of Christ in the New Covenant.</p>

<p>Hebrews explains that God gave explicit instructions to Moses for building the tabernacle because it was to be a place where the Levitical priests would serve a “copy and shadow of the heavenly things.”&nbsp;God used this “copy and shadow”&nbsp;to teach His people about their real need for sacrifice, and to prepare them for when Jesus would one day be acting as our living priest—not with sacrifices “which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings,”&nbsp;but with an efficacious sacrifice; not in a “copy and shadow,”&nbsp;but in God’s presence—because of the resurrection:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?...</p>

<p>[I]t was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with [the blood of calves and goats], but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own...but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hebrews+9%3A11-26&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">9:11–26</a>)</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Not only was it necessary for Christ to enter heaven with the blood of His covenant on our behalf, but He also continues to intercede on our behalf:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The former priests, on the one hand, existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing, but Jesus, on the other hand, because He continues forever, holds His priesthood permanently. Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hebrews+7%3A23-25&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">7:23–25</a>)</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Christ’s intercession for us in heaven before the Father is necessary for our eternal salvation. Only Christ’s death could serve as our needed sacrifice, but only Christ’s resurrection could make Him our living priest.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hebrews+10%3A19-23&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">10:19–23</a>)</p>
</blockquote>
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title: “New Movement” of the Spirit
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 01/22/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/-new-movement-of-the-spirit
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>My advice with Lakeland was the same as with Toronto and any other unusual “new movement”&nbsp;of the Spirit: You can safely ignore it.</em></p>

<p>Over a decade ago, I offered a simple piece of advice meant to protect Christians from ever being taken in by any religious fad, novel teaching, or alleged new manifestation of the Spirit.</p>

<p>At that time, a movement variously called the “Toronto Blessing,”&nbsp;the “Laughing Revival,”&nbsp;and the “Brownsville Revival”&nbsp;stirred up contention for the bizarre behavior associated with it.</p>

<p>Others have come and gone. A few years ago, Todd Bentley of Fresh Fire Ministries in Lakeland, Florida, grabbed the Christian headlines with what some called the “Lakeland revival.”&nbsp;His style and methods were controversial for the same kinds of reasons “Toronto”&nbsp;was.</p>

<p>Circumstances like these give thoughtful Christians pause. On the one hand, when spiritual manifestations seem bizarre, the urge is strong to run the other way. On the other hand, the Scriptures themselves record God’s unusual activity in the past. Aslan is not a tame lion, after all. No sincere Christian wants to resist the Holy Spirit and offend God.</p>

<p>My advice with Lakeland was the same as with Toronto and any other unusual “new movement”&nbsp;of the Spirit: You can safely ignore it.</p>

<p>I gleaned this advice from Second Timothy, Paul’s swan song, his final thoughts before facing the executioner. In it, he passes the torch of the Gospel to Timothy with a sober warning: Difficult times are coming. First, there will be trouble in the world:</p>

<p>But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God (2 Tim 3:1-4).</p>

<p>Second, there will be trouble in the church:</p>

<p>For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths (2 Tim. 4:3-4).</p>

<p>Trouble is on the horizon, Paul says—trouble in the world, and trouble in the church. He then gives Timothy the antidote, a solution found in three simple words: “You, however, continue...”</p>

<p>You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them...All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:14-4:2).</p>

<p>In Paul’s final warning to the church, he does not counsel them to face the challenges of the future by embracing new movements of the Spirit. Instead, he tells them to look backwards, to continue in and guard what has already been revealed.</p>

<p>This is Paul’s message throughout his entire letter. “Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me”&nbsp;(1:13). “Guard...the treasure which has been entrusted to you”&nbsp;(1:14). “And the things which you have heard from me...these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also”&nbsp;(2:2).</p>

<p>Paul warns of a time of moral chaos falling on the world and theological chaos falling on the church. The antidote for both is the same: Steady at the helm. Guard what has already been entrusted to you. Continue in the things which you have already learned.</p>

<p>Everything we need to be fruitful and productive, to be trained in righteousness, to be adequately equipped for every good work, has already been revealed. For Paul, all the old stuff was all the right stuff.</p>

<p>New movement of the Spirit? Maybe. And maybe not. I don’t have to decide. Instead, I’m taking the safe route by heeding Paul’s advice and focusing on the old movement of the Spirit. And so should you.</p>

<p>You might also want to focus on some of the “old”&nbsp;tried and true STR training material we are making available in an entirely new and easy-to-use way: a 14-week Tactics mini-course or the Ambassador Insights 26-week mini-course, both conveniently delivered every week directly to you by email. Sign up for these STR classics by simply following the links&nbsp;below.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.str.org/subscribe" target="_blank">Tactics</a></p>

<p><a href="https://www.str.org/subscribe" target="_blank">Ambassador Insights</a></p>
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title: Cultivate the Moral Imagination to Develop Character
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/11/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/cultivate-the-moral-imagination-to-develop-character
content:
            <div> 
		<p>If you’re trying to teach your children moral virtues (or you’re being intentional about developing them in yourself), here’s some good <a href="http://nationalreview.com/article/364662/it-takes-pirate-raise-child-daniel-b-coupland" target="_blank">advice</a> from Hillsdale College professor Daniel Coupland:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[T]he issue of “character education”&nbsp;goes much deeper than the latest “techniques.”&nbsp;Character education is really about cultivating the moral imagination, a process that takes time, patience, and the right kinds of experiences.</p>

<p>In his book <em>Tending the Heart of Virtue</em>, Vigen Guroian describes the moral imagination this way:</p>

<p>The moral imagination is not a thing, not even so much a faculty, as the very process by which the self makes metaphors out of images given by experience and then employs these metaphors to find and suppose moral correspondences in experience... The richness or the poverty of the moral imagination depends on the richness or the poverty of experience.</p>

<p>But can’t we just explain virtuous behavior? Guroian says no.</p>

<p>Mere instruction in morality is not sufficient to nurture its virtues. It might even backfire, especially when the presentation is heavily exhortative and the pupil’s will is coerced. Instead, a compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in a way that is attractive and stirs the imagination. A good moral education addresses both the cognitive and affective dimensions of human nature.</p>

<p>Guroian then makes a compelling case for cultivating the moral imagination through children’s literature.</p>

<p>The great fairy tales and fantasy stories capture the meaning of morality through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, where characters must make difficult choices between right and wrong, or heroes and villains contest the very fate of imaginary worlds.</p>

<p>The best way to begin the cultivation of moral character is to immerse children in great stories where virtues are rendered attractive—not in a sticky-sweet or preachy sort of way, but in a way that captures and feeds their imagination.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Teaching children what moral virtues <em>are</em> isn’t enough. You need to let them <em>taste</em> those virtues so they can see they’re desirable. (Of course, never do any of this outside the context of God’s grace, the cross, and our need for the Holy Spirit.) And since God is the foundation and standard of goodness, every time you teach your child to love something good, you will be molding his or her desire towards God Himself.</p>

<p>For more on this, see “<a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2013/09/discipled-by-narnia.html" target="_blank">Discipled by Narnia</a>”&nbsp;and Greg’s <a href="http://www.str.org/podcasts/weekly-audio/joe-rigney—-live-like-a-narnian-october-15-2013#.Us3syPbB3cE" target="_blank">interview</a> with Joe Rigney.</p>
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title: What Dawkins Really Thinks
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/30/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-dawkins-really-thinks
content:
            <div> 
		<p>A reaction of “Tell us what you <em>really</em> think, Dr. Dawkins”&nbsp;in response to his famous quote about the character of God (see below) turns out to not be as rhetorical as one might think. Dawkins clarified his position a bit on a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5_0Fx_RICI" target="_blank">recent episode</a> of the <a href="http://www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable" target="_blank"><em>Unbelievable?</em></a> podcast in the midst of his conversation with a rabbi and a Christian:</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>JUSTIN BRIERLEY</strong> (host): “The God of the Old Testament,”&nbsp;you said, “is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully”...Do you still stand by that description of the God of the Old Testament?</p>

<p><strong>RICHARD DAWKINS</strong>: Yes, I do...</p>

<p><strong>RABBI JOSH LEVY</strong>: There is also a deeply, deeply ethical God, who 3,000 years ago is saying to the Israelites, “You have to care about the vulnerable in your society. You have to do your business honestly. You have to look after your workers. You have to care about the immigrant who comes into your society.”&nbsp;So to only describe the God of the Old Testament in that way, I think, is actually just simplistic and doesn’t help us to really engage with the Old Testament as a whole.</p>

<p><strong>RICHARD DAWKINS</strong>: Yeah, I accept that, of course. It was a passage that was semi-tongue-in-cheek actually, because, well, when I do public readings of my books, I do it with my wife, and we usually try to get a laugh from the audience early on in our performance because it sort of lightens up the atmosphere. And that passage, we always used when doing <em>The God Delusion</em> readings right at the beginning, because it does get the audience roaring with laughter... So it was a sort of humorous passage, and I do accept that if you look through either the Old Testament or the New Testament, you can certainly find passages of wisdom, passages that one would ethically approve of tucked in amongst the others that one wouldn’t ethically approve of...</p>

<p><strong>CHRIS SINKINSON</strong>: The problem, though, I think...is that, Richard, you are very good with rhetoric. You have a very powerful mastery of the English language, and that rhetoric can be very bullying sometimes. And...in terms of the passage, it’s clearly a very slanted view of how to read the text of the Old Testament. Most of us would take the clearer passages to interpret the harder passages. We would be talking about Leviticus 19—“love your neighbor as yourself”—before we’re looking at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. So, we would have an approach to Scripture that would weight things in such a way that that description of God just does not sound like the God who I believe in, or the God who I worship. So the rhetoric, I think, can generate a lot more heat than it does light.</p>

<p><strong>RICHARD DAWKINS</strong>: That’s probably fair, yes.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Well, there you go.</p>
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title: Chemist Grappled with Faith and Doubt
topic: Science
author: Melinda Penner
date: 01/23/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/chemist-grappled-with-faith-and-doubt
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Somehow I managed to get through high school and college without taking chemistry, so I never heard of Robert Boyle or “Boyle’s Law.”&nbsp;Here’s what students<a href="http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/chemistry-in-history/themes/early-chemistry-and-gases/boyle.aspx" target="_blank"> learn about him</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was born at Lismore Castle, Munster, Ireland, the 14th child of the Earl of Cork. As a young man of means, he was tutored at home and on the Continent. He spent the later years of the English Civil Wars at Oxford, reading and experimenting with his assistants and colleagues. This group was committed to the New Philosophy, which valued observation and experiment at least as much as logical thinking in formulating accurate scientific understanding. At the time of the restoration of the British monarchy in 1660, Boyle played a key role in founding the Royal Society to nurture this new view of science.</p>

<p>Although Boyle’s chief scientific interest was chemistry, his first published scientific work, New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and Its Effects (1660), concerned the physical nature of air, as displayed in a brilliant series of experiments in which he used an air pump to create a vacuum. The second edition of this work, published in 1662, delineated the quantitative relationship that Boyle derived from experimental values, later known as “Boyle’s law”: that the volume of a gas varies inversely with pressure.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>What many students never learn is that Boyle was a <a href="http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/2002/issue76/9.28.html" target="_blank">devoted Christian</a>.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>What is absent from this image is the deeply religious man who wrote as much about God as he did about the nature of air; the man who considered himself a “priest”&nbsp;in the “temple”&nbsp;of nature; the man who paid for translations of the Bible into Gaelic and into the language of the Indians in Massachusetts.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Boyle had doubts, but he saw them as the corollary of faith. His doubts moved him to think deeply about Christianity and gave him more confidence. He believed the study of God’s design in nature encouraged greater faith and confidence:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Noting that the Old Testament contained no “word that properly signifies Nature, in the sense we take it,”&nbsp;Boyle argued for what he called the “mechanical philosophy,”&nbsp;which explains natural phenomena from the purely mechanical properties and powers given to unintelligent matter by God at the creation. Such an approach, he believed, more clearly underscored the sovereignty of God and located purpose where it properly belonged: in the creator’s mind, not in some imaginary “Nature.”</p>

<p>Boyle also advocated the argument for the existence of God from signs of design in nature. Indeed, he had a strong interest in apologetics generally, reflecting his lifelong conversation with his own religious doubts. He wrote extensively on apologetic themes and in his will established a lectureship for “proving the Christian Religion...”</p>

<p>As he wrote in Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things, Boyle wanted his readers not to “barely observe the Wisdom of God,”&nbsp;but to be emotionally convinced of it. And what better to instill “wonder and veneration”&nbsp;in people than to show them the “Admirable Contrivance of the Particular Productions of [His] Immense Wisdom”? He had in mind especially the exquisitely fashioned parts of animals. Thereby, Boyle believed, “Men may be brought, upon the same account, ...to acknowledge God, to admire Him, and to thank Him.”</p>
</blockquote>
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title: Only One Question: What Is Marriage?
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/18/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/only-one-question-what-is-marriage-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TNmKo5KcMY" target="_blank">testimony</a> Ryan Anderson (co-author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Marriage-Woman-Defense/dp/1594036225" target="_blank"><em>What Is Marriage</em></a>) gave to the Indiana House Judiciary Committee earlier this week is a succinct defense of man/woman marriage, so it’s worth taking ten minutes to watch and then pass on his testimony to friends who are interested in understanding why you’re against redefining marriage.</p>

<p>He introduces his arguments this way (from the <a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/01/11880/" target="_blank">adapted transcript</a>):</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Everyone in this room is in favor of marriage equality. We all want the law to treat all marriages equally. But the only way we can know whether any state law is treating marriages equally is if we know what a marriage is. Every state law will draw lines between what is a marriage and what isn’t a marriage. If those lines are to be drawn on principle, if those lines are to reflect the truth, we have to know what sort of relationship is marital, as contrasted with other forms of consenting adult relationships.</p>

<p>So, in the time I have today, I’ll answer three questions: what is marriage, why does marriage matter for public policy, and what are the consequences of redefining marriage?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Watch his testimony below, or read the written version <a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/01/11880/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>

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title: Fetal Humans Are Persons Who Can Be Wronged
topic: Bioethics
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/22/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/fetal-humans-are-persons-who-can-be-wronged
content:
            <div> 
		<p>In an <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369092/abortion-and-human-equality-interview" target="_blank">interview</a> posted today on the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Frank Beckwith explains, “[B]y excluding the unborn from the human community, and claiming that this being is not the sort of human that requires the law to protect it, the state is in fact making a non-neutral claim: The unborn child is not one of us.”</p>

<p>He uses an illustration to clarify the truth that unborn human beings are, in fact, persons who can be wronged by our treatment of them:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Pro-lifers, with few exceptions, argue that the unborn is a moral subject (i.e., a person) from the moment it comes into being at conception, because it is an individual human being and all human beings have a personal nature, even when they are not presently exercising the powers that flow from that nature’s essential properties. These essential properties include capacities for personal expression, rational thought, and moral agency. The maturation of these capacities is the perfection of a human being’s nature. Contrary to what some abortion-choice critics claim, the human fetus can be wronged even before it can know it has been wronged.</p>

<p>To understand the pro-lifer’s point, consider this example. Imagine that an abortion-choice scientist wants to harvest human organs without harming human beings that are persons. In order to accomplish this, he first brings several embryos into being through in vitro fertilization. He then implants them in artificial wombs, and while they develop, he obstructs their neural tubes so that they may never acquire higher brain functions, and thus they cannot become what the typical prochoice advocate considers “persons.”</p>

<p>Suppose, upon hearing of this scientist’s grisly undertaking, a group of pro-life radicals breaks into his laboratory and transports all the artificial wombs (with all the embryos intact) to another laboratory located in the basement of the Vatican. While there, several pro-life scientists inject the embryos with a drug that heals their neural tubes and allows for their brains to develop normally. After nine months, the former fetuses, now infants, are adopted by loving families.</p>

<p>If you think what the pro-life scientists did was not only good but an act that justice requires, it seems that you must believe that embryos are beings of a personal nature ordered toward certain perfections which it is wrong to obstruct. This is why pro-life advocates would say that human embryos are not potential persons, but rather, that they are persons with potential.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read the rest of the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369092/abortion-and-human-equality-interview" target="_blank">article</a>.</p>
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title: Clarifying, Not Banning
topic: Christian Living
author: Melinda Penner
date: 01/16/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/clarifying-not-banning
content:
            <div> 
		<p>The headlines this week about the judge declaring Oklahoma’s marriage amendment unconstitutional stated that the “ban”&nbsp;was struck down. Virtually every time amendments such as this one are reported in the media, they’re referred to as bans against same-sex marriage.</p>

<p>These state amendments are not bans—they don’t single out same-sex marriage specifically. These amendments are attempts to clarify and define what marriage has meant in each state for centuries, and in civilization for millennia. Sure, same-sex marriage may be the instigating factor that makes it necessary to clarify what marriage is, but that’s not the same as banning it. Indeed, all kinds of variations on the definition of marriage are also excluded from state amendments, even if they aren’t mentioned specifically. The judge in this case got that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/14/justice/oklahoma-gay-marriage/" target="_blank">wrong</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Kern said that “the Court’s rationality review reveals Part A an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a government benefit.”&nbsp;Proponents of the state constitutional measure, he points out, “purposefully (drew a line) between two groups of Oklahoma citizens—same-sex couples desiring an Oklahoma marriage license and opposite-sex couples desiring (a) marriage license.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Same-sex couples aren’t singled out in the Oklahoma amendment or other state amendments. They may not fit the definition, but neither do all kinds of possible variations on marriage.</p>

<p>The “ban”&nbsp;language isn’t accurate and it’s misleading. It’s not as though these amendments are being passed as mere displays of discrimination. It’s not as though citizens who think government has a special interest in traditional marriage are singling out same-sex couples. These amendments are defensive attempts to clarify what marriage has always meant because of aggressive efforts to change marriage. And in clarifying marriage in that regard, it also clarifies it regarding other attempts at redefinition, which are in the works already.</p>

<p>The “ban”&nbsp;language isn’t accurate, and it misrepresents the dynamic of what’s going on in culture right now.</p>
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title: The True Story of Christian Missionaries
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/15/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-true-story-of-christian-missionaries
content:
            <div> 
		<p>It seems the reports of missionaries harming the world have been greatly exaggerated. From <a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/missions-rescuing-from-hell-and-renewing-the-world" target="_blank">John Piper</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>In 2012, sociologist Robert Woodberry <a href="http://www.academia.edu/2128659/The_Missionary_Roots_of_Liberal_Democracy" target="_blank">published</a> the astonishing fruit of a decade of research into the effect of missionaries on the health of nations. The January/February 2014 issue of Christianity Today tells the <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-february/world-missionaries-made.html?paging=off" target="_blank">story</a> of what he found...</p>

<p>Titled “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy,”&nbsp;[Robert] Woodberry’s article in the <em>American Political Science Review</em>, defends this thesis: “The work of missionaries...turns out to be the single largest factor in insuring the health of nations”&nbsp;(36). This was a discovery that he says landed on him like an “atomic bomb”&nbsp;(38)...</p>

<p>To be more specific, Woodberry’s research supported this sweeping claim:</p>

<p>Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations. (39)</p>

<p>He concedes that “there were and are racist missionaries...and missionaries who do self-centered things.”&nbsp;But adds: “If that were the average effect, we would expect that the places where missionaries had influence to be worse, than places where missionaries weren’t allowed or were restricted in action. We find exactly the opposite on all kinds of outcomes”&nbsp;(40).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Woodberry applies this result specifically to missionaries who were “conversionary Protestants,”&nbsp;which he <a href="http://www.academia.edu/2128659/The_Missionary_Roots_of_Liberal_Democracy" target="_blank">defines</a> this way: “<em>Conversionary Protestants</em> (1) actively attempt to persuade others of their beliefs, (2) emphasize lay vernacular Bible reading, and (3) believe that grace/faith/choice saves people, not group membership or sacraments.”</p>

<p>Here’s a quote from <a href="http://www.academia.edu/2128659/The_Missionary_Roots_of_Liberal_Democracy" target="_blank">Woodberry’s article</a>, then I’ll have two points in response:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[M]uch of what we think we know about the roots of democracy needs reevaluation. The historic prevalence of CPs is not the only cause of democracy, but CPs seem both important and neglected in current research. This does not mean that CPs consistently directly supported democracy nor is mass conversion to Protestantism necessary. Yet in trying to spread their faith, CPs expanded religious liberty, overcame resistance to mass education and printing, fostered civil society, moderated colonial abuses, and dissipated elite power. These conditions laid a foundation for democracy and long-term economic growth.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>First, it’s quite possible that the role of CPs has been ignored (and false conclusions previously drawn) because it is currently fashionable among intellectuals to think of Christianity as being silly and small (a phenomenon I wrote about in “<a href="/w/atheists-small-view-of-christianity" target="_blank">Atheists’&nbsp;Small View of Christianity</a>”). This is simply false—and it’s false whether or not Christianity is true.</p>

<p>Nevertheless, this idea seeps into us from the culture—whether it comes explicitly from atheist spokesmen or implicitly from the fictional world of television, where God and Christianity, if they ever make an appearance at all, are inconsequential to the important characters and events. As apologists, we need to purposefully push back against this view of Christianity with the truth, as Tom Gilson argues in “<a href="http://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2013/08/why-we-must-tell-christianitys-true-story/" target="_blank">Why We Must Tell Christianity’s True Story</a>.”</p>

<p>Second, the CPs didn’t set out to create democracies; they set out to make disciples of Christ. But worldviews have unintended consequences as they work their way out through people’s actions. Despite the truth of this, very little care is taken today to consider the consequences of undermining and replacing the worldview that created Western civilization with one that has a very <a href="/w/atheism-and-universal-human-rights" target="_blank">different understanding</a> of the human person and its value (to name only one area of disagreement).</p>

<p>The problem described in the first point has led to the problem of the second. That is, because the truth of how Christianity shaped our society has been ignored, there’s 1) an ignorance of which aspects of our culture are uniquely grounded in Christianity and 2) a false assumption that these beloved ideas will thrive in a new worldview when their foundation is discarded.</p>

<p>(See also “<a href="/w/values-fight-poverty" target="_blank">Values Fight Poverty</a>”&nbsp;and “<a href="/w/virtues-and-the-economy" target="_blank">Virtues and the Economy</a>.”)</p>
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title: Beckwith: They Don’t Understand Religious Conservatives
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/28/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/beckwith-they-don-t-understand-religious-conservatives
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Unfortunately, I think Frank Beckwith is right about <a href="http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2014/the-closing-of-the-secular-progressive-mind.html" target="_blank">this</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>There are many unfortunate consequences of the culture wars. But one in particular, rarely noticed, is how it has insulated secular progressive academics from the habits of mind, ways of life, and types of reasoning that are integral to the worldview of religious conservatives. Consider just these two examples.</p>

<p>On the matter of the sanctity of human life, secular progressives will sometimes accuse religious conservatives of only caring about the unborn child before he is born, but not afterwards...</p>

<p>On the issue of marriage, secular progressives often depict the view of religious conservatives as arising purely from animus against gay and lesbian citizens. In fact, this depiction has been so successfully advanced in the culture that even the <a href="http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/anthony-kennedy-in-platos-cave.html" target="_blank">deeply literate</a> Justice Anthony Kennedy has made it the one dogma of his sexual orientation jurisprudence that cannot in principle be disproven.</p>

<p>But for religious conservatives, the distance between this depiction and how they really think of marriage is so great that they do not recognize themselves in it. Yet because the portrayal is so deeply ingrained in the wider culture, any rebuttal of the depiction sounds to the secular progressive as a desperate rewriting of reality in order to rescue a floundering political cause...</p>

<p>In the largely insular world of the secular academy, there is virtually no attempt to try to understand the beliefs of religious conservatives on their own terms. Although that certainly harms religious conservatives, it harms secular progressives and their students even more. For it denies them the sort of full-orbed appreciation of differences that secular universities incessantly preach, but rarely practice.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This is a real problem, and it’s one I’m not sure how to get around, because no amount of reasoned arguments can trump a suspicion of bad motives once it’s firmly implanted. If it’s assumed our arguments aren’t being made in good faith, why should anyone take the time to try to understand what they consider to be illegitimate rationalizations?</p>

<p>Just last week, after a brief back-and-forth between us, one commenter on this blog thought he was getting down to the real issue when he <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2014/01/only-one-question-what-is-marriage.html?cid=6a00d83451d2ba69e201a3fc83ab07970b#comment-6a00d83451d2ba69e201a3fc83ab07970b" target="_blank">said</a> in response to a post arguing for man/woman marriage, “Please ask yourself: what is the source of the bitterness or fear or personal discomfort that leads you to oppose an expansion of the concept of family? Is it all really just based on a half-dozen or so phrases from religious texts from thousands of years ago?”&nbsp;His characterization of the situation revealed not only that he didn’t understand the arguments I was making, but also that it didn’t occur to him we’re convinced our arguments are true. It’s only because we think the health of our society depends on an accurate understanding of <a href="https://www.str.org/blog/only-one-question-what-is-marriage#.W6mRqxNKijR" target="_blank">what marriage <em>is</em></a> that we’re arguing against same-sex marriage; but because he hasn’t worked to see things from our perspective, the only thing that makes sense to him is that we’re reacting out of bitterness and fear.</p>

<p>Whenever something like this happens, I’m amazed that people are more willing to believe that half the country is made up of hateful bigots than to consider that either they’ve missed the arguments sincerely being made or they’ve failed to take them at face value.*</p>

<p>(It’s worth reading the rest of Beckwith’s <a href="http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2014/the-closing-of-the-secular-progressive-mind.html" target="_blank">article</a> to hear his brief description of the conservative religious view on both marriage and abortion.)</p>

<p>*I can already hear the inevitable comparison of our arguments with those promoting slavery. Weren’t those arguments made out of bigotry? And weren’t they made by half the country? Yes, but the inability to see the difference between our arguments and theirs illustrates the very problem I’m explaining. Those arguing for slavery cited the ontological inferiority of black people as a premise in their arguments. But <em>none</em> of our arguments contains the premise that homosexual people are less deserving of rights than heterosexual people. The arguments aren’t about a lower status of human dignity for homosexuals, they’re about the objective and relevant differences between men and women. And yet, despite the fact that it plays no part in our arguments, bigotry against homosexuals is consistently read into them, and the real premises ignored. The fact that people can’t see this major difference between these two lines of argumentation merely proves they don’t understand the actual arguments well enough to do so.</p>
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title: Jesus, the Son of Man
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 12/11/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/jesus-the-son-of-man
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Who is this Jesus whom we are celebrating this Christmas? Alistair Begg and Sinclair Ferguson write in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Name-above-Names-Alistair-Begg/dp/1433537753/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_har?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386725325&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=name+above+all+names" target="_blank"><em>Name above All Names</em></a> about the title Jesus used to refer to Himself:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Given [the vision of the Son of Man coming “with the clouds of heaven”&nbsp;“to the Ancient of Days”&nbsp;in] <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=dan+7%3A13-14&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Daniel 7</a>, there is more to Jesus’&nbsp;use of the title “Son of Man”&nbsp;than a simple stress on his humanity in distinction from his deity. The picture of the vision is one of unparalleled triumph, magnificence, and, indeed, glory. The Son of Man is seen coming to the throne of the Majesty on High, the Ancient of Days, and receiving authority over the whole cosmos. The rationale for this title cannot be that it stresses humility rather than great dignity! Somehow both are involved.</p>

<p>“Son of”&nbsp;is a Hebrew way of saying “possessing the properties of, being characterized by, exhibiting the marks of.”&nbsp;The expression “son of destruction”&nbsp;means a person for whom destruction is in character...</p>

<p>So, when the Scriptures use the expression “son of man,”&nbsp;one latent aspect of its meaning is: “here is a true man”...</p>

<p>But it is also worth noting that in Ezekiel the expression is used <em>without the definite article</em>. Ezekiel is <em>a</em> son of man, not “<em>the</em> Son of Man”! The Lord Jesus alone is <em>the</em> Son of Man...</p>

<p>The term appears again, significantly, in Psalm 8, in the question, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”</p>

<p>Psalm 8 is a meditation on creation and on the sheer condescending goodness of God in making man as his image and in his likeness. We contribute nothing to our own existence, and yet God has lavished privileges upon us—and did so first of all on Adam. The son of man is God’s image, privileged to be given a kind of threefold office. He is to be the prophet who brings God’s word to all creation. He is to be the priest, indeed the liturgist, who gives intelligent expression to the worship that is due from all of God’s creatures. He is to be the king who will exercise his reign and dominion.</p>

<p>The background, therefore, to Jesus’&nbsp;use of the expression as a self-identifier seems to lie in the creation of Adam, the ministry of Ezekiel, and the vision of Daniel.</p>

<p>Jesus is the real man, or, in Martin Luther’s expression “The Proper Man.”&nbsp;He is “man as he was created to be”&nbsp;and “the man who fulfills man’s destiny.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Hallelujah!</p>
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title: We Need Ambassadors
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/10/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/we-need-ambassadors
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I came across a disturbing <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/the-agony-of-frank-luntz/282766/" target="_blank">article</a> in <em>The Atlantic</em> about Frank Luntz, a political consultant working with focus groups, who is going through a personal crisis and considering leaving politics altogether.</p>

<p>Though Luntz speaks specifically about the state of political discourse, his observations are disturbing to me as an apologist, because the trend he sees among Americans likely applies to religion and ethics as well as to politics:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn’t listen to each other as they once had. They weren’t interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor. “They want to impose their opinions rather than express them,”&nbsp;is the way he describes what he saw... Haven’t political disagreements always been contentious, I ask? “Not like this,”&nbsp;he says. “Not like this.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>If you’re interested in apologetics, then you’re likely engaging in discussions with atheists and others who disagree with you. Now more than ever, we need to be intentional about being good ambassadors, even when to do so seems more difficult than ever. Even when we don’t think the other side is playing fair. Even when we appear to “lose”&nbsp;because of it.</p>

<p>It’s not a bad time to review STR’s Ambassador’s Creed:</p>

<ul>
	<li><strong>READY</strong>: An Ambassador is alert for chances to represent Christ and will not back away from a challenge or an opportunity.</li>
	<li><strong>PATIENT</strong>: An Ambassador won’t quarrel, but will listen in order to understand, then with gentleness seek to respectfully engage those who disagree.</li>
	<li><strong>REASONABLE</strong>: An Ambassador has informed convictions (not just feelings), gives reasons, asks questions, seeks answers, and will not be stumped by the same challenge twice.</li>
	<li><strong>TACTICAL</strong>: An Ambassador adapts to each unique person and situation, maneuvering with wisdom to challenge bad thinking, presenting the truth in an understandable and compelling way.</li>
	<li><strong>CLEAR</strong>: An Ambassador is careful with language and will not rely on Christian lingo, nor gain unfair advantage by resorting to empty rhetoric.</li>
	<li><strong>FAIR</strong>: An Ambassador is sympathetic and understanding towards others and will acknowledge the merits of contrary views.</li>
	<li><strong>HONEST</strong>: An Ambassador is careful with the facts and will not misrepresent another’s view, overstate his own case, or understate the demands of the Gospel.</li>
	<li><strong>HUMBLE</strong>: An Ambassador is provisional in his claims, knowing that his understanding of truth is fallible. He will not press a point beyond what the evidence allows.</li>
	<li><strong>ATTRACTIVE</strong>: An Ambassador will act with grace, kindness, and good manners. He will not dishonor Christ in his conduct.</li>
	<li><strong>DEPENDENT</strong>: An Ambassador knows that effectiveness requires joining his best efforts with God’s power.</li>
</ul>

<p>More on this <a href="http://www.str.org/about/ambassadors-creed" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
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title: Ethical Stem Cell Therapies Are the Successful Therapies
topic: Bioethics
author: Melinda Penner
date: 12/10/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/ethical-stem-cell-therapies-are-the-successful-therapies
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Christianity Today</em> reports:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[Scientists] have learned how to reprogram adult cells so that they can do many things an embryonic cell can do. No human embryos are destroyed in the process. Along the way, embryonic stem cells—just a decade ago hailed as the future of medicine—have largely been bypassed. Some researchers still use them, but for now, the future belongs to adult stem cells and iPS cells, which are adult cells genetically reprogrammed to express specific genes.</p>

<p>Every year for the past 10 years, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has funded more adult stem cell research compared with embryonic research. For 2012, NIH grants totaled $146.5 million for embryonic stem cell research, but $504 million for adult stem cell research—a difference of $357.5 million. And the belief that adult stem cells are more promising than embryonic stem cells for therapies is now largely mainstream.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/december/old-cells-new-tricks.html" target="_blank">Read the whole thing here.</a></p>
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title: Got Same-Sex Attraction? Things Can Change
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 12/04/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/got-same-sex-attraction-things-can-change
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Most of the world seems to believe that same-sex attraction can’t be changed. I believe this is a myth.</p>

<p>I attended the NARTH (National Association for Research &amp; Therapy of Homosexuality) annual convention in Phoenix a few weeks ago and learned a lot about the current state of research helping people with unwanted same-sex attraction (SSA). I’m not a therapist of any sort, but I go almost every year to keep abreast of the work being done in this field.</p>

<p>It turns out that not only is sexual orientation fluid, but many instances of change occur <em>without any therapy or intervention</em>. For example, a study from the <em>Archives of Sexual Behavior</em> found that 68% of 15 year-olds with <em>same-sex</em> attraction had <em>opposite-sex</em> attraction (OSA) by the age of 21.* Again, these changes occurred spontaneously.</p>

<p>It’s interesting to note that sexual identification appears to be most fluid during these teenage years, precisely when youth are most likely to be affirmed by the culture as “gay.”&nbsp;Yet what we find is that it’s more likely that they will naturally fall back to predominately OSA within a few years.</p>

<p>Another highlight of the conference was to learn how clinicians have improved the effectiveness of therapy. By complimenting their therapy with new modalities used to treat other psychological symptoms, they are now able to achieve results more quickly.</p>

<p>In fact, some of the clinicians I spoke to said that if a person with unwanted SSA enters therapy, they <em>expect</em> them to experience change in their attraction. If they don’t see results, then either the therapist is missing something or the client is not following through on their end. The point is that they are finding a high rate of success helping people reduce their unwanted SSA.</p>

<p>Just to be clear, the therapists I spoke with are not saying that it’s easy to achieve success or that everyone is able to change. It’s hard work. Nor are they suggesting to force therapy on anyone. In fact, they believe in client self-determination and pursuing the client’s goals. They often treat gay men and women for other kinds of psychological symptoms with no intent to alter their SSA.</p>

<p>Another point of clarification is that categorical change (from exclusive SSA to exclusive OSA) is relatively rare, but it does occur. NARTH clinicians (and their clients) see change occur along a continuum, where many of those with unwanted SSA achieve major and sustained shifts in their sexual attraction that they find satisfying. These people begin with exclusive or dominant SSA and end with dominant OSA. Most importantly, they experience significant degrees of satisfaction because they find that their OSA is more congruent with their values or life goals.</p>

<p>Those who deny that change is possible often have unrealistic expectations for what constitutes genuine change. Their standard seems to be a categorical 100%-gay-to-100%-straight change. Anything short of that is failure. The instant a former homosexual experiences even a hint of a homoerotic thought, they’re branded a backslider, a faker, or an <em>ex</em>-ex-gay. This is unrealistic, though, and isn’t consistent with the measures of success for other therapies. As I wrote in my <a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK379" target="_blank">book</a>, “People being treated for depression still feel depressed at times. Others fail entirely. That doesn’t mean depression can’t be treated. The same is true with other psychological conditions like bipolar, obsessive compulsive disorder, etc.”&nbsp;In other words, genuine change occurs along a continuum.</p>

<p>I suspect that many people are skeptical of this report and that’s understandable. To be honest, I’ve been following this field for more than a decade and I was surprised. It’s rare to hear this kind of success, even in Christian circles. It’s possible, though, that one reason for this is that sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) constitute a broad range of therapies. From what I can tell, many clinicians at this conference specialize in a particular type of therapy that has proven more effective than others. An even smaller group are combining modalities to their therapy to be more efficient. That’s why you might hear of people attempting SOCE but finding that rate of success to be extremely low. It could be that they are pursuing religiously mediated change or other therapy methods that aren’t necessarily used by NARTH’s clinicians.</p>

<p>Either way, it seems the claim that change is impossible is a myth. Not only does therapy help men and women with unwanted SSA, it’s becoming more effective.</p>

<p>That’s a problem for the gay rights narrative. If homosexuals can change, then this casts doubt that homosexuality is an inborn, immutable trait. If homosexuals can change, it will be hard to draw a parallel between sexual orientation and ethnicity. If homosexuals can change, they can no longer claim that God made them that way. Many of the arguments of the gay rights narrative will seem specious.</p>

<p>*Savin-Williams et al., “Prevalence and Stability of Sexual Orientation Components during Adolescence and Young Adulthood,”&nbsp;<em>Archives of Sexual Behavior</em>, 2007.</p>
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title: Why Is Homosexuality Bad in Itself?
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Greg Koukl
date: 01/02/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/why-is-homosexuality-bad-in-itself-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>There are passages in the Old Testament and in the New Testament that give us some indication of what is really wrong with homosexuality from God’s perspective.</em></p>

<p>The question of why homosexuality is bad in itself is not easy to answer. I’m not suggesting that the Scripture doesn’t give us insight. I think it does, and I’m going to offer that, but I’m not convinced the answer is going to be satisfying to a lot of people because most have lost the ability to recognize the significance of teleology.</p>

<p>“Teleology”&nbsp;is a theological and philosophical term referring to the purpose things were made for. Things are made with a “telos,”&nbsp;or an end, in view. For example, thumbs are made for grasping, eyes are made for seeing, and ears are made for hearing. Of course, if evolution is true, there is no teleology. If the Darwinian story is true, there are no purposes. Instead, there’s just a mechanistic characterization of the biological world; things work a certain way, but not for any reason or to any end.</p>

<p>On a the theistic worldview things are the way they are for a reason. There are certain ends God has in mind for things. I’m thinking of Frank Beckwith’s comment, “Just because you can eat an ashtray doesn’t make it food.”&nbsp;There’s a certain purpose for food, and it is tied to the design of human bodies. Just because you can get something into your stomach—an ashtray, for example—doesn’t mean you’re eating food. This is all part of the notion of teleology.</p>

<p>So the first problem here is that teleology in the natural realm is hard for people to affirm.</p>

<p>Secondly, people do not want to acknowledge God’s appropriate role in the world. Every created thing is a result of God acting, willing it into existence. If God makes something, then it belongs to Him. He has appropriate authority over everything He has made, which is everything. Therefore, He can make things for ends that suit Him. Those ends are the proper and right ends, and a disregard of those ends results in something that’s not right, not the way God wanted, and not what He made it for.</p>

<p>The answer I’m going to give about homosexuality trades on these two notions. First, things are made for certain ends. Second, the one who made them has the final say on what the appropriate ends—or purposes—are. Both of those things make modern man uneasy because he wants to be the center of the show. He doesn’t want to acknowledge someone else is in charge. Man wants autonomy, the liberty to use things as he pleases, regardless of what God had in mind.</p>

<p>This brings us to the issue of homosexuality. There are passages in the Old Testament and in the New Testament that give us some indication of what is really wrong with homosexuality from God’s perspective.</p>

<p>Leviticus 18:22 says that when a man lies with a man as a man lies with a woman, it’s an abomination. The verse is sandwiched between prohibitions of bestiality and prohibitions of child sacrifice. Both bestiality and child sacrifice are not what God intended of human beings. Children were not made to be sacrificed to idols. Animals were not designed to be the sexual partners of humans. In the same way, if a man sleeps with a man the way he’s supposed to sleep with a woman, it violates the purpose—the teleology—God had in mind when he created human sexuality. When we take what God has made and use it in a way completely inconsistent with God’s purpose, that is a rejection of God himself. That’s why I think Leviticus 18 is worded the way it is.</p>

<p>Now, let’s fast-forward to Romans in the New Testament. We find the same thing going on, but the language is more precise. In my Bible I’ve highlighted certain words in the second half of chapter one: the word “exchanged”&nbsp;in verse 23, “God gave them over”&nbsp;in verse 24, “exchanged”&nbsp;in verse 25, “God gave them over”&nbsp;in verse 26, underneath that “exchanged,”&nbsp;and “God gave them over”&nbsp;in verse 28.</p>

<p>This is a passage about God being angry at human beings who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Some of the truth they’re suppressing is that things were made to be used in a certain way, according to God’s desire. Man didn’t follow God’s purpose, though, but rather “exchanged”&nbsp;and, therefore, perverted. “Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible men, of birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures. Therefore, God gave them over to the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored.”&nbsp;So they exchange, and then God gives them over to this depravity.</p>

<p>Verse 25: “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions.”&nbsp;What “degrading passions”&nbsp;is He talking about? “For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way the men also abandoned [note the parallel here with “exchanged”] the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their persons the due penalty of their error.”&nbsp;The next verse: “God gave them over to a depraved mind.”</p>

<p>Here are human beings exchanging their desires for God’s intentions—God’s telos—so God gives them over to that. He removes grace from them and they get worse and worse and worse. This is the condition of humankind. Homosexuality is given as an example of man’s rebellion against God’s designs.</p>

<p>I want to read the passage once again because you can hear in this verse the same concept we saw in Leviticus, yet with more clarity. Leviticus seems to be saying that it’s wrong when a man lies with a man the way he ought to lie with a woman. I inserted the word “ought”&nbsp;here, but I think it’s implied. In Romans, though, it can’t be missed: “For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural”—that is, they’re doing with women what they should be doing with men—“and in the same way, the men abandoned the natural function of the woman.”</p>

<p>Notice what’s being abandoned here: “the function of the woman.”&nbsp;God gave the man a woman for the sexual function, but he’s exchanging the woman for a man. They “abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another.”&nbsp;Consequently, these acts are described as “indecent,”&nbsp;a “degrading passion,”&nbsp;“unnatural,”&nbsp;characteristic of a “depraved mind.”&nbsp;Those are all words Paul uses to describe the behavior.</p>

<p>The simple answer to why homosexuality itself is bad is because it is a perversion of God’s provision regarding a deep and profound aspect of the created order. God made things one way because He’s in charge. He created the world to function a certain way. There’s teleology, a purpose to it, and when the purpose is fulfilled it’s a beautiful thing.</p>

<p>Instead, human beings took the truth of God, suppressed it and exchanged it for a lie. So God gave them over to degrading passions in which they exchange the sexual function of the opposite sex for same-sex sexual behavior.</p>

<p>I understand there’s a psychological reason some people have same-sex attraction. It’s a gender confusion that develops under certain circumstances that’s inconsistent with the way God intended people to function sexually.</p>

<p>However, all sin is similar to homosexuality in that it is a temptation and a desire to do what is contrary to God’s purpose. The response should be the same as for any other kind of sin. We should stand against it, but instead we love it, at least in the moment, because it brings us satisfaction. We are driven to sin because we’re fallen.</p>

<p>Romans is a book that records an argument by Paul about the human condition and what God has done to rescue us from it. Paul’s point in Romans 1 is that human beings are desperately lost. All humans—not just homosexuals—suppress the truth and righteousness. The human condition is universally rebellious: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them. God made it evident to them, for since the creation of the world His invisible attributes of his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.”</p>

<p>Given God’s revelation and man’s response of rebellion, no one has an excuse. This is the case Paul is making in the first three chapters of Romans. Everybody, the “heathen,”&nbsp;the Jew, the so-called “moral”&nbsp;man, are all condemned. Paul concludes this point in chapter 3 when he writes, “...so that every mouth may be closed and all the world become accountable to God.”</p>

<p>Homosexuality is wrong because it perverts the good purposes of God. This is true of all sin, though, and Romans makes it clear that each of us is guilty in our own way, even if our sin is not homosexuality.</p>
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