# articles

title: Celebrating Advent and Book Recommendations
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 12/05/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/celebrating-advent-and-book-recommendations
content:
            <div> 
		<p style="text-align: left;"><span>In the past, I have not been the best Christmas-season dad for my daughters. My background was not so much Christ-oriented as it was festive and family-oriented.&nbsp;</span>In an effort to get better, here are some things our family is doing to be intentional about investing Christmas with both the meaning and the seasonal “magic” that makes this month so memorable.</p>

<p>The goal is creating a meaningful and memorable family celebration of Christ’s birth. We want to focus on Christ, but there are many other aspects of the Christmas celebration, some more “secular,” that add to making the entire season’s focus on Christ special.</p>

<p>In general, there are three ways to refocus during this season. First, slow down. There are so many obligations and things to do this season. Find small ways to say "no" in order to free up your schedule and take the season a little slower. For example, I recommend saying "no" to Christmas cards this year. Christmas cards take a lot of time to make and send. Can you think of the people who didn't send you a card last year? I can't. Maybe forgoing Christmas cards this year is one way you'll find rest.</p>

<p>Second, be together with whoever is most important to you. For me, that's my immediate family. If you're single, like I was for 48 years, attach yourself to another family. Don't be alone this Christmas.</p>

<p>Third, simplify. Buying gifts online using Amazon Prime is a great way to simplify. When you sign up, you get 30 days for free, which includes free 2-day shipping on a vast amount of products. So, you can get all your Christmas shopping done in about 30 minutes, and then visit the mall or go out to dinner stress-free.</p>

<p>Here are some specific ways to make the Christmas season more meaningful:</p>

<ol>
	<li>If you are going to send out Christmas cards, choose a <span style="text-decoration: underline;">meaningful</span> Christmas card (no “Happy Holidays”), and send it out early.</li>
	<li>Put out a nativity, though don’t put baby Jesus out until Christmas morning.</li>
	<li>Greet/thank people with a <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christmas</span> greeting that stands out (e.g., “Happy Christmas").</li>
	<li>Display a magnetic car sticker of a stable and Bethlehem star and “Keep Christ in Christmas” (<a href="http://kcnativitysets.com/" target="_blank">kcnativitysets.com</a>).</li>
	<li>Celebrate Advent during Sunday evening dinners with candles and a short reading.</li>
	<li>Play CDs of Christmas music.
	<ul>
		<li>Manheim Steamroller</li>
		<li>Amy Grant</li>
		<li>Traditional hymns sung the traditional way</li>
	</ul>
	</li>
	<li>Watch meaningful videos.
	<ul>
		<li>“The Nativity Story” (We watch this the first week as a kick-off.)</li>
		<li>“It’s a Wonderful Life”</li>
		<li>Some version of “A Christmas Carol” (I like the 1951 version with Alistair Sim.)</li>
		<li>“The Star of Bethlehem” (more for older kids and adults)</li>
		<li>Any others meaningful to you</li>
	</ul>
	</li>
	<li>Have a “date” with the kids to buy the other parent's Christmas present and eat out.</li>
	<li>Attend a Church Christmas concert.</li>
	<li>Visit the mall to look, not buy.</li>
	<li>Practice Christmas charity.
	<ul>
		<li>Give to an organization, e.g., Salvation Army, Operation Christmas Child.</li>
		<li>Give face-to-face to someone needy in your community (financial help or visit with act of kindness).</li>
	</ul>
	</li>
	<li>Attend Christmas Eve service at church.</li>
	<li>Have a Christmas morning reading from Luke <span style="text-decoration: underline;">before</span> presents are opened.</li>
</ol>

<p><strong>&nbsp;</strong>Christmas gift book bundle:</p>

<ul>
	<li>Theological reference: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Theology-Millard-J-Erickson/dp/0801036437/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386273876&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=christian+theology" target="_blank"><em>Christian Theology</em></a>—Erickson</li>
	<li>Intro to Christianity: <a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK105" target="_blank"><em>Mere Christianity</em></a>—Lewis</li>
	<li>Basic apologetics book:
	<ul>
		<li><a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK225" target="_blank"><em>I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist</em></a>—Turek and Geisler</li>
		<li><a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK145" target="_blank"><em>Reasonable Faith</em></a>—WLC</li>
	</ul>
	</li>
	<li>Devotional:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Valley-Vision-Leather-Collection-Devotions/dp/0851518214/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386273918&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+valley+of+vision" target="_blank"><em>The Valley of Vision—A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions</em> </a>(leather)</li>
	<li>Practical engagement: <a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK316" target="_blank"><em>Tactics—A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions</em></a></li>
	<li>Personal spiritual growth:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Enemy-Within-Straight-About-Defeat-ebook/dp/B007Y708HM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386273969&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+enemy+within" target="_blank"><em>The Enemy Within</em></a>—Chris Lungaard</li>
	<li>Bible study:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-All-Worth-ebook/dp/B000FC2KC4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386274020&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=how+to+read+the+bible+for+all+its+worth" target="_blank"><em>How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth</em></a>—Fee and Stuart</li>
</ul>
</div>

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title: Suffering Adversity and Character Development
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 12/03/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/suffering-adversity-and-character-development
content:
            <div> 
		<p><strong>Whatever difficulties you face, it’s safe to say there is something else going on than what meets the eye.</strong></p>

<p>In what way is God working all things for good? According to Romans 8:28, God is conforming us to the image of his Son. Jesus Himself was brought to maturity through suffering. Hebrews 2:10 says, “For it was fitting for God, for Whom and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the Author of their salvation through sufferings.���</p>

<p>The author of salvation is Jesus. He was brought to His proper fullness and maturity through suffering. This was the way Jesus lived, so this is the way that followers of Jesus will live. This is one of the most profound lessons I have been confronted with as a follower of Christ. I hesitate to say I’ve learned the lesson because I don’t know if the lesson is ever fully learned.</p>

<p>It is a lesson that we are confronted with time and time again: spiritual growth comes principally through hardship. I’m not saying that the Christian life is always miserable. I’m saying that the means by which God gets our attention and changes us is often through difficulty, hardship, and suffering, which is demonstrated throughout the New Testament. That’s why I’m mystified as to how folks like those in the so-called Word Faith movement believe that God wants us healthy, wealthy, and prosperous at all times.</p>

<p>Persevering under suffering and difficulty is the theme for the believer in 1 Peter. It talks about Jesus as our example: suffering unjustly, not speaking out, not complaining, and trusting His soul to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.</p>

<p>I was talking about this concept with a friend of mine who’s going through some very difficult things. Sometimes we can accept persecution as part of being a Christian. Some adversities, like marital strife or problems with children, are harder to accept. They are things that seize us as they come upon us. We didn’t deserve it, we didn’t cause it, but there it is.</p>

<p>On the one hand, there is the practical side of deciding how to solve the issue. On the other hand, there is something God is doing that is unrelated to the conflict itself. The conflict is the tool that God is using to do something else in the life of the Christian.</p>

<p>Lewis captures this notion wonderfully in a number of places in the Chronicles of Narnia series. In <em>The Horse and His Boy,</em> Aslan reveals to this boy, who has gone through hardships of all sorts through his life, that the hardships have been orchestrated by Aslan to accomplish a particular goal. The goal is good and noble yet not obvious in the midst of the hardships.</p>

<p>Whatever difficulties you face, it’s safe to say there is something else going on than what meets the eye. There is something that God is intending to accomplish within us that is something other than the nature of the conflict itself.</p>

<p>When you are in a difficult trial and the pressure becomes almost unbearable, you may cry out to God, and it may seem that the circumstances get worse. The pressure increases and you cry out because you think you can’t take it. You start to wonder what the point is and where the good is. Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s as if you’re under this weight, and the weight is being piled on more and more. You’re crying out and then something happens.</p>

<p>The thing that happens is not that the weight gets removed. Rather, something deep inside of you moves. The pressure is so immense that it causes something to shift. The thing that God wants to shift is so calcified, solidified, and resistant to movement that it takes an unbelievable amount of pressure.</p>

<p>I can think of a specific occasion in my own life in which this occurred. Afterwards, I felt a significant shift had taken place. Deep down inside of me, something changed, and it was so deep and significant that it was a forever kind of change. The world looked different to me after that. If that shift hadn’t taken place, I don’t think I’d be doing what I do at Stand to Reason today.</p>

<p>I’m offering this reflection as an encouragement to those who are feeling the weight. You’re crying out wondering what could be worse? What could happen next? Things may get worse and pressure may increase, but stay the course. Just stay the course, for we know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He pre-destined to become conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:28-29).</p>
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title: The Original Text Is Not a Physical Object
topic: History
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 12/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-original-text-is-not-a-physical-object
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Michael Kruger <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2013/05/15/the-difference-between-original-autographs-and-original-texts/" target="_blank">responds</a> to Bart Ehrman’s objection, “What good is it to say that the autographs (i.e., the originals) were inspired? We don’t have the originals!”</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Ehrman’s focus on the autographs (or the absence of them) is not unusual in modern critiques of biblical authority. However, this sort of argument often creates the impression (even if it is unintentional) that the autographs are the original text - almost as if the original text were a physical object that has been lost.</p>

<p>But the original text is not a physical object. The autographs contain the original text, but the original text can exist without them. A text can be preserved in other ways. One such way is that the original text can be preserved in a multiplicity of manuscripts. In other words, even though a single surviving manuscript might not contain (all of) the original text, the original text could be accessible to us across a wide range of manuscripts.</p>

<p>Preserving the original text across multiple manuscripts, however, could only happen if there were enough of these manuscripts to give us assurance that the original text was preserved (somewhere) in them. Providentially, when it comes to the quantity of manuscripts, the New Testament is in a class all its own. Although the exact count is always changing, currently we possess more than 5,500 manuscripts of the New Testament in Greek alone. No other document of antiquity even comes close.</p>

<p>Even though we do not possess the autographs, textual scholars have acknowledged that the multiplicity of manuscripts allows us to access the original text. Eldon Jay Epp notes, “The point is that we have so many manuscripts of the NT...that surely the original reading in every case is somewhere present in our vast store of material.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Kruger summarizes:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Historically, Christian affirmations of biblical authority are often expressly restricted to the “autographs”... But does the lack of autographs mean such affirmations of biblical authority are meaningless? No, because the authority does not reside in a physical object, but in the original text. And the original text has been preserved in another way, namely through the multiplicity of manuscripts.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>For more, read the rest of the <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2013/05/15/the-difference-between-original-autographs-and-original-texts/" target="_blank">article</a> or listen to Greg’s interview with Michael Kruger on <a href="/w/michael-kruger-the-question-of-canon-december-17-2013-" target="_blank">this week’s podcast</a>.</p>

<p>(HT: <a href="http://www.thepoachedegg.net/the-poached-egg/2013/08/the-difference-between-original-autographs-and-original-texts.html?utm_content=buffer067ed&amp;utm_source=buffer&amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=Buffer" target="_blank">The Poached Egg</a>)</p>
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title: The Bible Is Offensive
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 12/24/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-bible-is-offensive
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Maybe we in the West were so steeped in Christianity for so long that its words ceased to be shocking and became merely familiar words. However it happened, somewhere along the way we forgot something very important: the Bible is offensive.</p>

<p>In his article titled “<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/when-you-defend-phil-robertson-heres-what-youre-really-defending-2013-12" target="_blank">When You Defend Phil Robertson, Here’s What You’re Really Defending,</a>”&nbsp;Josh Barro has this to say about the controversy over Phil Robertson’s <a href="http://www.gq.com/entertainment/television/201401/duck-dynasty-phil-robertson?printable=true" target="_blank">GQ interview</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>3. Robertson hates gay people.</strong> Robertson in [a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiDjXf4AUIE#t=304" target="_blank">speech at a church</a> in] 2010: “Women with women, men with men, they committed indecent acts with one another, and they received in themselves the due penalty for their perversions. They’re full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God-haters. They are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless. They invent ways of doing evil.”</p>

<p>This last one [#3] is key. My inbox is full of “love the sinner, hate the sin”&nbsp;defenses of Robertson’s 2013 remarks. But Robertson doesn’t love gay people. He thinks they’re, well, “full of murder.”&nbsp;His views on gays are <em>hateful</em>, inasmuch as they are full of hate.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Barro sees this quote from Robertson as being the key bit of evidence that he hates gay people. The only problem is that this quote didn’t originally come from Robertson, it’s from <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rom%201:18-32&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Romans 1:26-30</a>, and the passage is far worse than Barro thinks, because the “they”&nbsp;referred to in the second half of the quote isn’t who he thinks it is.</p>

<p>If this chapter—and the words of murder, envy, and strife—were only about gay people, then most of us could just rest easy, express some righteous indignation against “the other guy,”&nbsp;and then walk away without feeling personally confronted or facing any nagging fear of our own condemnation.</p>

<p>But the passage is much worse than that.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rom+1-3&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Romans 1-3</a> calls homosexuals sinners. And me. And you. And everyone under the Law, and everyone not under the Law, and...well, <em>everyone</em>. As the very first <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rom%202:1&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">verse</a> following the section quoted by Robertson points out:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself, for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The first three chapters of Romans are devoted to making it clear that God <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2013/02/god-cares-more-about-behavior-than-most-people-think.html" target="_blank">disapproves</a> of your lifestyle of sin. No one except Jesus is exempted from these chapters. No one. Barro should be much more offended than he actually is.</p>

<p>The Duck Dynasty controversy is a good indication that our culture has come out of Christianity far enough to start feeling the impact of its radical words once again, and that’s not a bad thing if it can cause people to reflect on three things: 1) I am a sinner, 2) God is a perfect Judge, and 3) I need a savior.</p>

<p>If the media think the Bible only applies these three truths to gay people, just wait until they figure out how “hateful”&nbsp;the Bible really is. My hope is that when our culture finally does feel the full weight of the offense, the <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rom%203:21-26&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">conclusion</a> of Romans 1-3 will once again be seen as equally radical:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The glory of Christianity is that we don’t have to deny <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2010/03/god-solved-the-justicegrace-problem.html" target="_blank">God’s justice <em>or</em> His loving grace</a>. We can <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2013/11/free-to-say-weve-sinned.html" target="_blank">face our own sin without fear</a> because the cross preserved God’s justice, making way for His grace.</p>

<p>Knowledge of these radically beautiful <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2013/12/what-jesus-came-to-do.html" target="_blank">truths</a> has to begin with knowledge of something radically ugly, something very offensive indeed: our own sin. Let one and all discover their just condemnation so we can show them the cross. We are all “by nature children of wrath, even as the rest,”&nbsp;make no mistake about it. As Phil Robertson has made clear about his own life, “Among [condemned sinners] we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh”...</p>

<blockquote>
<p>But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=eph%202:1-7&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Ephesians 2:1-7</a>).</p>
</blockquote>
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title: Christianity and Culture
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 12/05/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/christianity-and-culture
content:
            <div> 
		<p>How the monasteries preserved and advanced education and culture in the middle ages:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>When Charlemagne took the reins, Europe was teetering under regional warfare, poverty, illiteracy, clerical corruption, lax spiritual standards, and lingering pagan practices. There were no major cities. Local life was agrarian and feudal. Education had become nonexistent. Thus, one of his chief aims was to bring order and reform to both society and the church. Charlemagne read his Bible regularly and regarded himself as the protector of the church. Monasteries played a vital role in his vision for a Christian civilization. He urged the monks not only to have a strong spiritual commitment but also an active cultural life...</p>

<p>In his 789 General Admonition outlining reforms for the church, Charlemagne lamented the many poorly written letters he had received from monasteries: “We therefore started to fear that as they were not that accomplished in writing, they were perhaps even less accomplished in understanding the Sacred Scriptures, and we know very well that the incorrect use of words is dangerous, errors of meaning being the most dangerous of all.”</p>

<p>God forbid that the church’s doctrine or practice should falter on a grammatical error! Yet that was precisely the problem. People were praying incorrectly, and how people are taught to pray affects what they believe. Though sermons were in the local languages, the Bible and the liturgy were in Latin, and few monks or clergy knew Latin well enough to understand them. In order to “recall the kingdom which God had given him to the worship of God,”&nbsp;Charlemagne was convinced that books were the key. The resulting explosion of literary activity, education, and cultural revival is often called the “Carolingian Renaissance.”</p>

<p>Monks were at the heart of this explosion. They heeded Charlemagne’s warning that “correct conduct may be better than knowledge, nevertheless knowledge precedes conduct,”&nbsp;and mastered Latin in order to study Scripture and other early documents of the church. Monasteries became publishing houses, producing original manuscripts (such as the monk Einhard’s biography of Charlemagne) as well as tens of thousands of copies of biblical and classical texts. The monk-copyists developed a clear style of handwriting known as Carolingian minuscule—readily recognizable as the ancestor of basic letter shapes today.</p>

<p>Monastic libraries often held several hundred titles (the largest, at Fulda, had almost 1,000), including Bibles, church fathers such as Augustine and Jerome, saints’&nbsp;lives, and major classical writers such as Cicero, Livy, and Tacitus. The monks’&nbsp;tireless efforts proved essential for the preservation of ancient literature. In most cases, the oldest surviving copies of such works we possess today were made by Benedictine monks in the early Middle Ages.</p>

<p>If there were books to read, there had to be schools to teach reading. Monastic schools were the most successful of the era, imparting the liberal arts to boys and girls destined for church careers or convent life.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/2007/issue93/7.26.html" target="_blank">Read more here.</a></p>
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title: What Jesus Came to Do
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 12/18/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-jesus-came-to-do
content:
            <div> 
		<p>God became a man. The incarnation of Jesus, “who, although He existed in the <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=phil%202:1-11&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">form of God</a>, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men,”&nbsp;is awe-inspiring enough on it’s own, but when we also consider what He came to do for us, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans%205:1-11&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">His enemies</a>, as one of us, the birth of Christ becomes something even more astounding: a demonstration of perfect love. From Alistair Begg and Sinclair Ferguson 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>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[T]he charges brought against Jesus...were blasphemy in the religious court (a capital offense) and treason in the civil court (also a capital offense). He was found “not guilty”&nbsp;on each count. Yet he was executed.</p>

<p>What is the underlying meaning of all this? It is very simple. The crimes are not his.</p>

<p>Whose crimes, then, are they?</p>

<p>Blasphemy and treason are the two crimes on our charge sheet in the judgment court of God. We have blasphemed against God by making ourselves the center of our world and the lord of our own life. We have committed treason against God’s rightful authority by refusing his will. That was what Adam did. It is what we also have done.</p>

<p>Jesus has been found guilty and condemned for our crimes.</p>

<p>In the Gospel narrative, every reliable witness before the court points to Jesus and says, “He is innocent of these charges.”&nbsp;There is only one possible explanation, therefore, for his death. He is accepting the charges leveled against us in the courtroom of the eternal Judge. He, the perfect image of God, is being marred beyond human semblance so that we might be restored to the image of God.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>1 John 3:16 says, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us.”&nbsp;The nature of love is self-sacrifice, and from the start, this is what the incarnation was about.</p>
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title: An Inconvenient Truth for the Gay Rights Movement
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 12/09/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/an-inconvenient-truth-for-the-gay-rights-movement
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for December 2013</em></p>

<p>You know the gay rights narrative. Homosexuals are born that way, change is impossible, and their behavior is morally permissible. For those who believe in a higher power, God made them gay and loves them that way. Homosexuals should find moral parity with the plight of African Americans during their struggle for civil rights.</p>

<p>This narrative demands an overhaul of our culture. Laws must accommodate the unique desires of homosexuals, no matter their impact on schools, businesses, or the military. Marriage must expand to include same-sex couples.</p>

<p>Religion must adapt too. The Bible? Reinterpret it. Theology? Change it. Homosexual behavior can no longer be sin. Archaic biblical prohibitions must be updated to meet modern values. Churches, religious groups, and individuals that resist change are labeled homophobic and demonized until they succumb to the pressure.</p>

<p>But there’s an inconvenient truth that won’t go away: Homosexuals can change. Gay rights activists will stop at nothing to prevent this belief from becoming widespread. It’s the one fact that undermines the entire homosexual narrative.</p>

<p>If homosexuals can change, then the gay rights narrative collapses. That means homosexuality isn’t genetic, biological, or inborn. If you aren’t born gay, then same-sex attraction is <em>not</em> immutable.</p>

<p>If homosexuals can change, then sexual orientation isn’t in the same category as ethnicity. After all, no African American ever became Assyrian. Therefore, sexual preferences aren’t a matter of civil rights. The demand to include same-sex couples in marriage becomes baseless.</p>

<p>If homosexuals can change, then there’s no need to reinterpret the Bible. Homosexual behavior is still sin, and God didn’t make gays with same-sex attraction. The claim of 1 Corinthians 6:9, that former homosexuals exist, is not all that controversial. Leaving a life of homosexual activity is akin to leaving a life of any inappropriate sexual activity (fornication, adultery, etc.).</p>

<p>The entire house of cards collapses with this one reality that homosexuals can change. That’s why the greatest threat to the gay-rights movement is the ex-gay testimony.</p>

<p>Gay rights advocates are working feverishly to shut down the voice of former homosexuals. They have a three-pronged approach. First, they try to discredit the testimony of former homosexuals. They claim ex-gays are either lying, deluded, or repressing their same-sex attractions. They’ve set up watchdog organizations to monitor the ex-gay movement. The instant a former homosexual expresses or acts out on a homoerotic impulse, they declare the person has backslidden and claim victory. In some cases, former homosexuals do return to homosexual behavior and these people are celebrated and paraded as <em>ex</em>-ex-gay.</p>

<p>Second, they try to stop the source of the problem: religious motivation. Since many men and women find their same-sex attraction to be inconsistent with their religious values (typically <em>biblical</em> values), they try to reinterpret the Bible. There is a growing movement—even within conservative evangelical churches—to make Scripture gay-affirming, thereby eliminating the biblical imperative to change a life of homosexual behavior. One attempt at this effort is backed by an organization called “The Reformation Project.”&nbsp;They hope to align themselves with the noble reform efforts of Martin Luther. Matthew Vines, the organization’s “gay Christian”&nbsp;founder, has handpicked 50 conservative Christian leaders to bring his <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2013/11/a-response-to-matthew-vines-the-bible-doesnt-support-same-sex-relationships.html" target="_blank">message of pro-gay theology</a> to mainstream evangelicalism.</p>

<p>Third, they try to restrict therapists from helping homosexuals change. Both California and New Jersey have passed legislation banning clinicians from helping minors overcome same-sex attraction, <em>even if the minors ask for help</em>. It’s no surprise they pursue that strategy given that sexual attraction is most likely to change from homosexual to heterosexual—even without therapy—among the 15 to 21-year-old age group.*</p>

<p>Homosexuals can change, do change, and will continue to change. It isn’t always easy, and we shouldn’t force people to change, but clearly this is an option for those with unwanted same-sex attraction.</p>

<p>It’s this reality that is most troubling for gay rights advocates. It’s also the one fact that upends the gay rights narrative.</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: Updated Numbers for Ancient Manuscripts
topic: History
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/03/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/updated-numbers-for-ancient-manuscripts
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Because of all the recent discoveries of copies of ancient texts, many Christian apologists may be working with outdated numbers. From <a href="http://www.equip.org/articles/the-bibliographical-test-updated/" target="_blank">Clay Jones</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The bibliographical test examines manuscript reliability, and for more than a generation Christian apologists have employed it to substantiate the transmissional reliability of the New Testament. The bibliographical test compares the closeness of the New Testament’s oldest extant manuscripts to the date of its autographs (the original handwritten documents) and the sheer number of the New Testament’s extant manuscripts with the number and earliness of extant manuscripts or other ancient documents such as Homer, Aristotle, and Herodotus...</p>

<p>However, although apologists have stayed abreast of the dates of the earliest extant manuscripts and latest New Testament Greek manuscript counts, we haven’t kept up with the increasing numbers of manuscripts for other ancient authors that are recognized by classical scholars. For example, although apologists rightly claim that there are well over five thousand Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, they have reported the number of manuscripts for Homer’s <em>Iliad</em> to be 643, but the real number of <em>Iliad</em> manuscripts is actually 1,757.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Dr. Jones has attempted to bring the numbers up to date in this <a href="http://www.equip.org/articles/the-bibliographical-test-updated/" target="_blank">article</a> posted at CRI. I’m sure they’ve changed even since the article was published, but his numbers should be close.</p>

<p>To learn more about textual criticism and the existing New Testament documents, I recommend this <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/basics-new-testament-textual/id446655163" target="_blank">free course by Dan Wallace</a> on iTunes U.</p>
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title: Horus? Mithras? Jesus?
topic: History
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 12/26/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/horus-mithras-jesus-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Here’s some Christmas fun from Lutheran Satire: “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0-EgjUhRqA&amp;feature=c4-overview&amp;list=UU2-3Cf7Hw10b3NW05p2Z7IA" target="_blank">Horus Ruins Christmas</a>.”&nbsp;(For more on this topic, see Greg’s article “<a href="/w/jesus-recycled-redeemer-" target="_blank">Jesus, the Recycled Redeemer</a>.”)</p>

<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9" data-embed-id="s0-EgjUhRqA" data-styles="{&quot;width&quot;:&quot;100%&quot;}" style="width:100%"><iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" class="embed-responsive-item" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s0-EgjUhRqA?rel=0" tabindex="0"></iframe></div>

<p>(HT: <a href="https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/416260370806751234" target="_blank">@MZHemingway</a>)</p>
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title: What Would Polygamy Do to Society?
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 01/08/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-would-polygamy-do-to-society-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>In an attempt to combat polygamy in their state, Utah’s <a href="http://le.utah.gov/~code/TITLE76/htm/76_07_010100.htm" target="_blank">bigamy law</a> not only criminalized multiple marriage licenses, it also outlawed the cohabitation of multiple women with one man—even if only one of the women had a legal marriage license—to prevent polygamists from using this loophole to skirt the law.</p>

<p>This second part of Utah’s law was recently <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/14/us-usa-polygamy-sisterwives-idUSBRE9BD02720131214" target="_blank">struck down</a> by a U.S. District Judge, allowing for polygamy in practice, though it’s still not recognized by the state:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups ruled that the [cohabitation] aspect is too broad because it bars consenting adults from living together and criminalizes their intimate sexual relationships.</p>

<p>He said the law violates both the First Amendment’s clause ensuring religious rights and the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause designed to ensure liberty.</p>

<p>The rest of Utah’s bigamy law remains intact under the ruling, so only individuals who fraudulently obtain multiple marriage licenses would be guilty.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://www.ruthinstitute.org/pages/DrJBio.shtml" target="_blank">Jennifer Roback Morse</a> was <a href="http://issuesetc.org/2013/12/16/1-part-of-utahs-polygamy-law-struck-down-by-a-federal-judge-dr-jennifer-roback-morse-121613/" target="_blank">interviewed</a> on Issues Etc. about this, and as she notes, it’s a short step from this to the objection that the non-legally married wives and their children are being denied the rights and protections the law offers to the legal wife and children, leading to the conclusion that because of this unfairness, we ought to legalize polygamy. Add to this the principles cited and accepted for changing the definition of marriage to be one that includes same-sex couples (marriage is a matter of <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2012/05/the-competing-views-of-marriage.html" target="_blank">intense emotional connection</a> between people, you have a right to marry the person you love, “<a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2013/03/its-not-about-equality.html" target="_blank">marriage equality</a>”), and only a small push will be needed for the legalization of polygamy. There will be no <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2012/06/inconsistent-same-sex-marriage-advocates.html" target="_blank">principled reason</a> left to stand in its way.</p>

<p>Dr. Morse <a href="http://issuesetc.org/2013/12/16/1-part-of-utahs-polygamy-law-struck-down-by-a-federal-judge-dr-jennifer-roback-morse-121613/" target="_blank">explains</a> how equality and freedom suffer in polygamous societies:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Nobody wants to ask, “What happens if anybody can be polygamous any time that they want to, and you have a full-on polygamous society?”&nbsp;Well, what happens in those societies typically—and I challenge anybody to show me a society that contradicts this—is that the rich men have more than their share of wives. They have multiple wives, and guys with modest means are kind of scrambling around, looking for somebody to marry.</p>

<p>And so the systemic pressure in those societies is, number one, to drive the men out of society—to find some place for young men to go. So in [polygamous] Mormon culture, you’ll find the teenage boys being “driven off the ranch”&nbsp;kind of a thing, and you’ll also find pressure for girls to get married younger and younger. That’s the way the gap is filled is through younger and younger marriages. And you’ll also find more possessiveness of women. You don’t find a lot of <em>choices</em> among women. Women become prized, and they’re prized by those who are wealthy enough to afford multiple wives. And it doesn’t end up being more free for women, it ends up being less free for women. And so, like I say, I challenge anybody to show me a society that is a serious counterexample to that—where you’ve got widespread, society-wide acceptance of polygamy where you don’t end up with those types of effects.</p>

<p>And so, we’re moving—on the basis of individual rights and individual freedom—we’re moving to a system that is going to be less equal and less free, and certainly less equality between men and women. So I think this is a dark day for anything that would have ever called itself feminism or freedom...</p>

<p>They’re not thinking it all the way to the end and asking, “What happens when you don’t have a marriage institution?”&nbsp;What happens to women? What happens to children? What happens to your idea of equality? What happens to your idea of personal liberty, personal freedom, when women become something that’s so valued that they have to be controlled because rich men want a lot of women? That’s the dynamic that is being set into motion here.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Though the question of what the Bible has to say about polygamy is a different issue from the danger polygamy poses to a free society, I would point anyone who thinks the Bible endorses multiple wives to <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark+10%3A11&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Mark 10:11</a>. If marrying another woman while your divorced wife is alive can be considered by Jesus to be adultery, then He is assuming monogamy; for such a statement would make no sense if multiple wives were approved by God. Since Jesus ties His views on marriage in this passage to the creation of Adam and Eve, we can conclude that God’s ideal for marriage from the beginning was always one man and one woman; though as with divorce, it was our sin—our “hardness of heart”—that brought it about (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark%2010:2-11&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">10:2-9</a>).</p>

<p>Polygamy didn’t turn out well in the Bible (just ask Jacob and Solomon), and it wouldn’t turn out well today. It <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wife-No-Hardback-Eliza-Young/dp/1849028311/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0" target="_blank">fails</a> because it’s not what we were designed for. Why on earth would we want to go back to it?</p>
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title: We Expect to Be Christians without Study
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 12/03/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/we-expect-to-be-christians-without-study
content:
            <div> 
		<p>From one of my favorite books, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Christianity-Hendrickson-Christian-Classics/dp/1598561227/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_har?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1385145472&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=practical+view+of+christianity+hendrickson" target="_blank">A Practical View of Christianity</a></em>, by one of my favorite people, <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2012/08/happy-birthday-wilberforce.html" target="_blank">William Wilberforce</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[I]f, when summoned to give an account of our stewardship, we shall be called upon to answer for the use which we have made of our bodily organs, and of the means of relieving the wants and necessities of our fellow-creatures; how much more for the exercise of the nobler and more exalted faculties of our nature, of invention, and judgment, and memory, and for our employment of all the instruments and opportunities of diligent application, and serious reflection, and honest decision. And to what subject might we in all reason be expected to apply more earnestly, than to that wherein our eternal interests are at issue? When God has of his goodness vouchsafed [deigned] to grant us such abundant means of instruction in that which we are most concerned to know, how great must be the guilt, and how awful the punishment of voluntary ignorance!</p>

<p><em>And why, it may be asked, are we in this pursuit alone to expect knowledge without inquiry, and success without endeavor?</em> The whole analogy of nature inculcates on us a different lesson, and our own judgments in matters of temporal interest and worldly policy confirm the truth of her suggestions. Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence, but to rouse us to exertion; and <em>no one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, and strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labor, study, or inquiry</em>.</p>

<p>This is the more preposterous, because Christianity, being a revelation from God, and not the invention of man, discovering to us new relations, with their correspondent duties; containing also doctrines, and motives, and practical principles, and rules, peculiar to itself, and almost as new in their nature as supreme in their excellence<em>, we cannot reasonably expect to become proficients in it by the accidental intercourses of life, as one might learn insensibly the maxims of worldly policy, or a scheme of mere morals</em> [emphasis and paragraphs added].</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Christianity-Hendrickson-Christian-Classics/dp/1598561227/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_har?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1385145472&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=practical+view+of+christianity+hendrickson" target="_blank">book</a>.</p>
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title: What Luke Actually Wrote
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 12/06/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-luke-actually-wrote
content:
            <div> 
		<p>A caller to the radio program asked about answering a historical challenge to Luke 2 that Bart Ehrman has raised. I have to confess, I wasn’t aware of this apparent problem, and researching it has actually been quite fascinating. Ehrman mentions it in this week’s <em><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/what-do-we-really-know-about-jesus-63427" target="_blank">Newsweek</a></em> magazine. Part of the key to the answer is what the Greek text of Luke 2 actually says, as opposed to what we’ve come to think it says. Greg has observed that answering many of the problems about the Bible that callers raise on the radio program can be resolved simply by reading the text. That’s part of the answer here, plus a little historical context.</p>

<p>The gist of the problem is that Luke claims that the first tax when Quirinius was governor of Syria was at the time of Jesus’&nbsp;birth—around 4-2 B.C. The Jewish historian Josephus, however, records that the first tax under Quirinius’&nbsp;administration was in 6 A.D., after Jesus’&nbsp;birth. There’s no reconciling these reports, unless we actually look back at what Luke wrote and at some historical data.</p>

<p>First let me make the point Greg made to the caller. Luke itself is a historical account that we should take just as seriously as Josephus. The posture that the Bible is the questionable source behind other historical sources is just plain prejudice before examining the accounts. The Gospels, just like Josephus, claim to be ancient historical records, and they should be taken as such until proven to be untrustworthy. So far, they have <a href="/w/-misquoting-jesus-answering-bart-ehrman" target="_blank">not been</a> dismissed based on the <a href="https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/the-case-for-the-reliability-of-the-new-testament-free-bible-insert/" target="_blank">facts</a>, only by assumption. Josephus’&nbsp;accuracy can be questioned in light of Luke’s account just as much as the other way around.</p>

<p>As it turns out, the two historical sources are easily reconciled. And a quick note on answering apparent contradictions in the Bible: Reason requires we show a possible resolution, not that we have proof that it’s the actual resolution. If there’s a way to understand the text in harmony with other historical data, then we’ve answered the challenge. That’s true for any historical document, not just the Bible.</p>

<p>Go and read Luke 2 in the <a href="http://www.esvbible.org/search/luke+2/" target="_blank">ESV</a> or<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%202&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank"> NASB</a>—no tax is mentioned, only a registration or census. I would have recited Luke 2 from memory “that all the world should be taxed.”&nbsp;That’s in the KJV, but it’s not what Luke actually wrote. Luke doesn’t mention the purpose for the registration. We know from historical records that there were other reasons the rulers ordered registrations of their citizens, and that <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html#71" target="_self">Augustus ordered</a> citizens to register on more than one occasion. Tertullian reports that there were censuses conducted in Palestine during the time period Jesus was born. So we have historical support that registrations were conducted at that time.</p>

<p>It could be that the registration was for the purpose of renewing loyalty to Caesar on the 25th anniversary of the Roman Senate giving Augustus complete allegiance. As descendants of a royal family, both Mary and Joseph would have been required to go to the seat of their royal ancestor. Both had royal blood, so both had to be registered in Bethlehem.</p>

<p>In fact, Josephus reports an oath of loyalty took place at the time of King Herod. It fits perfectly with what Luke actually wrote.</p>

<p>The other apparent problem with Luke’s account is the description of Quirinius as governor of Syria, but other historical records show that others were governor during the time of Jesus’&nbsp;birth. And Josephus mentions that Quirinius was governor in 6 A.D., not at the time of Jesus’&nbsp;birth. However, <a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-firstapology.html" target="_blank">Justin Martyr recorded</a> that Quirinius was procurator in Judea during the time of Saturninus, who was governor of Syria. Justin Martyr adds that this was during the time of Jesus’&nbsp;birth and that Quirinius was there for the purpose of conducting a census. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Bible-Difficulties-An-Archer/dp/0310435706" target="_blank">Gleason Archer</a> explains that Quirinius was a special assistant to Augustus who often sent him on his behalf to conduct specific tasks. To the provincial citizens, procurators had authority just as the governors had. From a functional standpoint, there wasn’t any real difference between the offices. But from what I’ve read (I don’t know Greek), what Luke wrote means ruling or administrating; it doesn’t have to mean govern or governor, though it can. (The Greek can also be translated <em>before</em> Quirinius was governor of Syria, which would reconcile the timing and position, as well.)</p>

<p>So an appeal to what Luke actually wrote and some historical records reconcile this apparent problem. Luke said that he set out to write a careful historical account of what took place. And there’s very good reason to think that is what he accomplished.</p>

<p>Here’s an <a href="http://apologetics315.s3.amazonaws.com/files/04b-mcgrew-alleged-historical-errors-in-the-gospels.pdf" target="_blank">explanation</a> from Dr. Timothy McGrew.</p>
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title: Meet the Bible before You Read It
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 12/05/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/meet-the-bible-before-you-read-it
content:
            <div> 
		<p>We’re coming to the end of the year—the time when many hopeful Christians decide that next year will be the year they read through the Bible. Reading the whole Bible can be daunting the first time or two, and even after many complete read-throughs you might still not have a solid grasp of the framework of the story or understand the roles of the types of literature involved. So here’s something that will help you succeed in either finishing the Bible for the first time or enjoying a more meaningful reading next time.</p>

<p>As part of their current series on “How to Read the Bible,”&nbsp;the <a href="https://www.whitehorseinn.org/about-us/" target="_blank">White Horse Inn</a> posted some lectures by Michael Horton (about 30 minutes each) introducing and summarizing each of the major sections of the Bible, explaining how each part fits into the whole. (Related articles, books, audio, and other study aids are included in the links below.) Take the time to listen this month, and you’ll be ready to start reading on January 1.</p>

<ol>
	<li><a href="http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2013/11/03/whi-1178-how-to-read-your-bible/" target="_blank">How to Read Your Bible</a> (The Pentateuch)</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2013/11/10/whi-1179-the-bibles-history-books/" target="_blank">The Bible’s History Books</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2013/11/17/whi-1180-wisdom-the-prophets/" target="_blank">Wisdom and the Prophets</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2013/12/01/whi-1182-understanding-the-new-testament/" target="_blank">Understanding the New Testament</a></li>
</ol>

<p>You can continue to follow this “How to Read the Bible”&nbsp;series each Sunday on the White Horse Inn <a href="http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/" target="_blank">website</a> or by <a href="http://www.whitehorseinn.org/radio/" target="_blank">subscribing to their podcast</a>. (And for a more detailed overview of the Bible, see Greg’s <a href="http://store.str.org/SearchResults.asp?Search=bible+fast+forward&amp;Submit=Search" target="_blank">Bible Fast Forward</a>.)</p>
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title: God Took His Own Medicine
topic: Theology
author: Melinda Penner
date: 12/13/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/god-took-his-own-medicine
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Dorothy Sayers expresses well and in clear vernacular the reason for Christmas, the purpose of the incarnation: “God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He [God] had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine.”</p>

<p>There are many rational and sound ways to answer questions about why God allowed evil. In the end, God answers with Himself. God subjected Himself to the evil in this world and suffered the consequences. He isn’t a remote God observing human frailty; He’s experienced it, too. He “took His own medicine”&nbsp;by living a real human life and then suffering a hideous death He didn’t deserve. When we cry out about evil, He knows exactly what we’re feeling.</p>

<p>The little baby was born in a manger to experience evil and suffer in order to give us the final answer to it.</p>

<p>Sayers writes:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The Church’s answer is categorical and uncompromising and it is this: That Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God “by whom all things were made.”&nbsp;His body and brain were those of a common man; his personality was the personality of God, so far as that personality could be expressed in human terms. He was not a kind of demon pretending to be human; he was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be “like God”; he was God.</p>

<p>Now, this is not just a pious commonplace; it is not commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that, for whatever reason, God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—he [God] had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace, and thought it was worthwhile.</p>

<p>Christianity is, of course, not the only religion that has found the best explanation of human life in the idea of an incarnate and suffering god. The Egyptian Osiris died and rose again; Aeschylus in his play, The Eumenides, reconciled man to God by the theory of a suffering Zeus. But in most theologies, the god is supposed to have suffered and died in some remote and mythical period of prehistory. The Christian story, on the other hand, starts off briskly in St. Matthew’s account with a place and a date: “When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King.”&nbsp;St. Luke, still more practically and prosaically, pins the thing down by a reference to a piece of government finance. God, he says, was made man in the year when Caesar Augustus was taking a census in connection with a scheme of taxation. Similarly, we might date an event by saying that it took place in the year that Great Britain went off the gold standard. About thirty-three years later (we are informed), God was executed, for being a political nuisance, “under Pontius Pilate”—much as we might say, “when Mr. Johnson-Hicks was Home Secretary.”&nbsp;It is as definite and concrete as all that.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This is an excerpt from “The Greatest Drama Ever Staged,”&nbsp;which you can <a href="http://www.wacmm.org/Sayers.html" target="_blank">read here.</a></p>
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title: Heretic Reformer
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 01/09/2014
source: https://www.str.org/w/heretic-reformer
content:
            <div> 
		<p>John Wycliffe was so despised by the church because of his reform efforts that 20 years after his death in 1384, declared a heretic by a church council, his bones were exhumed, burned, and strewn in the river.</p>

<p>Wycliffe predates Martin Luther and the Reformation that was so effectual by about 150 years, but he addressed many of the same issues. He criticized church teaching that had no authority in the Bible. He denounced excessive practices that abused church authority, like selling indulgences for forgiveness and the Pope’s demand for taxes. Most importantly, Wycliffe translated the New Testament into English, putting the Bible in people’s hands rather than depending on the church for interpretation. The church tried to destroy copies of his translation, but copies survived.</p>

<p>His life’s work laid the foundation for the ideas that took hold later in the Reformation that changed the church and the world.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.biographyonline.net/spiritual/john-wycliffe.html" target="_blank">You can read more here.</a></p>
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title: Born Atheist?
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/13/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/born-atheist-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Glenn Peoples <a href="http://www.rightreason.org/2012/born-atheists-science-and-natural-belief-in-god/" target="_blank">responds</a> to the popular atheist claim that we’re all “born atheist”:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Now, there’s at least <em>some</em> truth here. Newborns don’t have a lot by way of beliefs. They’re an ignorant sort, you could say, so the fact that they don’t overtly believe in God, or stars, or carrots, or causation, or planets etc., really isn’t very interesting... What is more interesting is to talk about the kind of beliefs that babies—unaided by religious education—naturally form as their minds develop. It is here that comments [<a href="http://www.rightreason.org/2012/born-atheists-science-and-natural-belief-in-god/" target="_blank">claiming we’re “born atheist”</a>] are quickly culled from the pool of those that can now make it to the level of scientific respectability. They are wrong—children are not natural atheists after all...</p>

<p>Drawing on the findings of developmental psychology, cognitive anthropology and the cognitive science of religion, Justin Barrett writes in this issue [of <em>New Scientist</em>] about the way that children naturally come to believe in teleology and agency in the universe. On the whole, the evidence shows that</p>

<p>The vast majority of humans are “born believers”, naturally inclined to find religious claims and explanations attractive and easily acquired, and to attain fluency in using them. This attraction to religion is an evolutionary by-product of our ordinary cognitive equipment, and while it tells us nothing about the truth or otherwise of religious claims it does help us see religion in an interesting new light.</p>

<p>Justin L. Barrett, “Born Believers,”&nbsp;<em>New Scientist</em> March 17-23 2012, 39.</p>

<p>Now what, if anything, does all of this show? That theism is true? No. If nothing else, it simply falsifies the rhetoric that people are naturally atheists by default until they get indoctrination by religion. We can now close the door on that claim and relegate it to the long list of claims that have been shown to be untrue.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Leaving aside the fact that I’m not sure what would follow from it even if it were true, this claim that we’re natural atheists has never seemed particularly credible to me. If we weren’t naturally inclined toward religion, I would expect it to exist as a custom here and there, not be universally present throughout human history, even in the most isolated cultures.</p>

<p>Read the rest of “<a href="http://www.rightreason.org/2012/born-atheists-science-and-natural-belief-in-god/" target="_blank">Born Atheists? Science and Natural Belief in God</a>.”</p>

<p>(HT: <a href="http://www.thepoachedegg.net/the-poached-egg/2012/09/born-atheists-science-and-natural-belief-in-god.html" target="_blank">The Poached Egg</a>)</p>
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title: All of Life Is God’s
topic: Christian Living
author: Melinda Penner
date: 11/21/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/all-of-life-is-god-s
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Contrary to stereotypes, the Puritans were engaged in life on this earth because of their thoroughly integrated Christian worldview that “all of life is God’s.”</p>

<blockquote>
<p>In Puritan thinking, the Christian life was a heroic venture, requiring a full quota of energy. “Christianity is not a sedentary profession or employment,”&nbsp;wrote Baxter, adding, “Sitting still will lose you heaven, as well as if you run from it.”&nbsp;The Puritans were the activists of their day. In a letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons, Oliver Cromwell crossed out the words <em>wait on</em> and made his statement read “who <em>have wrestled with</em> God for a blessing.”</p>

<p>Stressing the God-centered life can lead to an otherworldly withdrawal from everyday earthly life. For the Puritans, it produced the opposite. Richard Sibbes sounded the keynote: “The life of a Christian is wondrously ruled in this world, by the consideration and meditation of the life of another world.”&nbsp;The doctrinal matrix that equipped the Puritans to integrate the two worlds was their thoroughly developed ideas on calling or vocation.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/2006/issue89/7.32.html" target="_blank">Read more about this.</a></p>
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title: Synthetic Life Points to a Designer
topic: Science
author: Melinda Penner
date: 11/06/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/synthetic-life-points-to-a-designer
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I listened to a <a href="https://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2013/11/the-michael-medved-show-weekly-science-culture-update-featuring-dr-paul-nelson-on-artificial-life/?hilite=%27michael%27%2C%27medved%27%2C%27weekly%27%2C%27show%27%2C%272013%27" target="_blank">fascinating discussion</a> with Dr. Paul Nelson on the Michael Medved show about <a href="http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/craig_venter_in078301.html" target="_blank">Dr. Craig Venter’s</a> work on the human genomes. Recent stories reported that he is on the verge of creating synthetic life. Not quite, since he’s using biological material in the process.</p>

<p>But Nelson had some interesting observations about Venter’s studies. He pointed out that in the process of engineering a living cell, he discovered that the error rate had a significant impact on failure. He had to keep the error rate very low if he was to be successful. Nelson pointed out that this has significant implications for Intelligent Design. The likelihood of keeping the error rate low enough without intelligent manipulation is extremely low. A purely material evolutionary process would be more likely to produce an error rate that made life impossible.</p>

<p>Nelson commented on Venter’s work in general and his openness to discovery and having his presumptions influenced by the evidence. Venter is one of the early scientists to posit that junk DNA actually has a purpose. When he finds a process in the cell that he doesn’t understand, he supposes he doesn’t understand it and pursues the idea that it’s more sophisticated than he imagines. Nelson contrasted this approach with the tendency of some evolutionary scientists to interpret such information as simple rather than complex. Nelson said that Venter has the virtue of being open to surprise in his work. Venter’s work has also led him to reject common descent and Darwin’s tree of life, though he does continue to believe in the evolutionary process.</p>

<p>[To listen to past and future episodes of Michael Medved’s Weekly Science &amp; Culture Update, subscribe to the <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/intelligent-design-future/id132125271" target="_blank">ID the Future podcast</a>.]</p>
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title: Pilgrim Governor
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 11/07/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/pilgrim-governor
content:
            <div> 
		<p>William Bradford was the long-serving governor of the Plymouth Colony. He arrived in the new world in 1621. Bradford helped author the Mayflower Compact, which set out the civil laws the settlers agreed to live by. The Compact provided for fair treatment for all with the common good in view. This is the general view of government that the Founding Fathers had in mind as they drew up the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These ideas were fundamental in the very beginning of our country with the Pilgrims.</p>

<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.history.com/topics/mayflower-compact" target="_blank">Bradford</a> served thirty one-year terms as governor of the fledgling colony between 1622 and 1656. He enjoyed remarkable discretionary powers as chief magistrate, acting as high judge and treasurer as well as presiding over the deliberations of the General Court, the legislature of the community. In 1636 he helped draft the colony’s legal code. Under his guidance Plymouth never became a Bible commonwealth like its larger and more influential neighbor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Relatively tolerant of dissent, the Plymouth settlers did not restrict the franchise or other civic privileges to church members. The Plymouth churches were overwhelmingly Congregationalist and Separatist in form, but Presbyterians like William Vassal and renegades like Roger Williams resided in the colony without being pressured to conform to the majority’s religious convictions.</p>

<p>After a brief experiment with the “common course,”&nbsp;a sort of primitive agrarian communism, the colony quickly centered around private subsistence agriculture. This was facilitated by Bradford’s decision to distribute land among all the settlers, not just members of the company.</p>
</blockquote>
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title: The Courage of Your Convictions
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 11/12/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-courage-of-your-convictions
content:
            <div> 
		<p>The issue of what Christians believe about homosexuality is coming up a lot for a reason. It is not because Christians are trying to force our views on other people. Christians who have a traditional understanding of the Bible are in a defensive posture right now with the trend of culture.</p>

<p>We are not trying to pass laws against homosexuals. Rather, laws are being passed in favor of homosexuality, like same-sex marriage. We are the ones who are being called names and trying to answer the charges against our convictions.</p>

<p>Homosexuality is not a theologically important issue like christology, the work of the cross and resurrection, or the nature of the Bible. Homosexuality and a lot of other significant sins are not theologically central to Christianity. If homosexuality does not rise to that level, one might ask, why is it such a big deal for Christians? The answer is because it is a watershed issue today. Here’s what I mean by that.</p>

<p>Watershed issues are balancing points. A watershed is also something that divides the sides. The water hits the top of the roof and goes one way or another.</p>

<p>The culture has drawn a line in the sand. That line has a name, and the name is “Tolerance.”&nbsp;What they have said from the other side is, “Join us. Cross the line. Be tolerant. Celebrate diversity.”&nbsp;Toleration in this issue requires approval and celebration. It is not a “live and let live”&nbsp;attitude. Many who were in favor of Prop. 8 in California got harassed because they held the view that marriage is between a man and woman.</p>

<p>Look at Chick-fil-A in Chicago, for example. The Mayor of Chicago asserted that those who don’t share the same values, don’t do business in the city of Chicago. Whose values would that be? Would that be the values of the state of Illinois or the city of Chicago? Did they take a poll? The fact was that same-sex marriage was not the law of the land. The law of the land was the value of the people at that moment.</p>

<p>Can you imagine if in a little town, like Monroe Louisiana, where I just spoke about six weeks ago, the mayor said, “Okay folks, you don’t share our values, you don’t work in our city. Our values are not pro-gay. Pro-gay businesses don’t work here.”&nbsp;The town would have been castigated, but the mayor of the city of Chicago got away with it.</p>

<p>What I’m saying is, there’s something afoot in our culture. The line is in the sand and the other side is saying, crossover, and we will consider you tolerant. But if you don’t crossover, we are going to harass you and call you names.</p>

<p>Are you willing to be called a bigot for Christ? Paul was called a fool. He said the Gospel is not foolishness. To people who are perishing it is foolishness, but the power of God to salvation is what it really is. God was well pleased by the so-called foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe the message. Paul was willing to be called a fool though he was not a fool. He was willing to wear that label to be faithful to Christ. Are you willing to be called a bigot, even if you are not a bigot?</p>

<p>I’m convinced most of you are not. Will you wear that label to be faithful to Christ or will you shrink? Will you falter? Will you say, Oh my gosh, she called me a name. I can’t bear it, and abandon Christ? There are thousands and thousands of Christians who are doing that. It’s faithlessness to Christ because it is contrary to what He teaches in the Bible.</p>

<p>If we can’t stomach being called a bigot with regards to homosexuality, do you think we’re going to fare much better when we are called names regarding Jesus being the only way? I’d like to think we would fare much better, but I don’t have that confidence. I think homosexuality is a watershed issue because if we cave into cultural and peer pressure on this issue, it’s that much easier to do it when were called names for preaching Jesus. That’s why I think this issue of homosexuality is so important. It’s a test by the culture to see whether you will stand by your convictions, where your faith really lies, how weak your spine actually is, and how easy it will be to knock you over.</p>

<p>I encourage you to decide now. Decide before the test. Decide with whom you are going to stand, because the test will come. My recommendation is to stand. You don’t have to stand with a sneer. You don’t have to stand with a growl. You don’t have to stand with harsh words. You stand. Then, you do not fear them.</p>

<p>I saw the movie <em>Captain Philips</em> about the Somali pirates. They were under threat, and the captain was standing tall. In one scene, there was a person cowering in the corner as the ship was being taken over. Some of the other guys were just falling over, wilting. I wanted the captain to say to the crew members, Stand up.</p>

<p>Put on your game face. Stand up. You are up against a hard thing, and it can be difficult, but stand up, don’t wilt. Act like a man or a woman, as the case may be. Stand by your convictions. If you cannot do that when the cultural challenges you on homosexuality, then you may not stand firm on the Gospel.</p>
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title: A Plan to Begin a Year of Learning
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/11/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/a-plan-to-begin-a-year-of-learning
content:
            <div> 
		<p>A man who will be mentoring a college-aged student in Theology, Bible, and Apologetics for a year asked me for some recommendations on materials he could use. I wanted to post my recommendations here, as well, because many of you may be looking for some sort of program you can go through on your own in order to develop a better foundation for your life as a Christian. And many others of you might like to use the knowledge God has gifted you with by starting a class or book club to build up the body of Christ around you.</p>

<p>Everything on this list is written at a level that a layperson can understand—there’s nothing too technical or overly academic. It will give you a good foundation in the Bible (which is most important), cover a few topics in apologetics that are big right now, and give you tools on how to think and have productive conversations.</p>

<p>The total number of pages in the books (not counting Bible pages) comes out to only 2489. That means if you go through this over a year’s time, there are roughly 50 pages of reading a week, or only 7 pages a day. Anyone can do this. And if you fall behind, just extend the time a little longer in order to finish.</p>

<p>Find a friend who can join with you to discuss these ideas and keep you on track, and then start reading! I recommend reading them in this order:</p>

<ol>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Creation-Cross-Understanding-First-Bible/dp/0310515467/ref=sr_1_2_title_0_main?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383603580&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=from+creation+to+the+cross" target="_blank">From Creation to the Cross</a> (and the associated “Suggested Scripture Readings”&nbsp;in each chapter)—<em>Book</em>: Understanding the big picture of the Bible and how the Old Testament fits together with the New is valuable both for theology and for apologetics. Nothing is more important than getting a good grasp of the Bible (400 pages).</li>
	<li><a href="/w/never-read-a-bible-verse" target="_blank">Never Read a Bible Verse</a>—<em>Article</em>: An intro to hermeneutics.</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-All-Worth/dp/0310246040" target="_blank">How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth</a>—<em>Book</em>: The study of hermeneutics is crucial. This book has the basics you need to know (288 pages).</li>
	<li><a href="https://www.bethinking.org/apologetics/you-want-to-be-a-good-apologist" target="_blank">You Want to Be a Good Apologist?</a>—<em>Post</em>: The best advice I ever received.</li>
	<li><a href="http://scriptoriumdaily.com/james-gray-on-mastering-the-bible/" target="_blank">James Gray on Mastering the Bible</a>—<em>Article</em>: This article has been life-changing for me. If you follow its advice, you’ll begin to know the Bible in a much deeper way.</li>
	<li><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/basics-new-testament-textual/id446655163" target="_blank">The Basics of New Testament Textual Criticism</a>—<em>Video</em>: A series of free videos on how textual criticism works, helping you understand and answer objections about the reliability of the Bible.</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-God-J-I-Packer/dp/083081650X/ref=pd_sim_b_1" target="_blank">Knowing God</a>—<em>Book</em>: Learn the basics of theology (286 pages—you can get a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-God-Study-Guide-Packer/dp/0830816496/ref=sr_1_3_title_0_main?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383603349&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=knowing+god+packer" target="_blank">study guide</a> for this one, as well).</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Holiness-God-R-Sproul/dp/0842339655/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383603432&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">The Holiness of God</a>—<em>Book</em>: Understanding God’s holiness is the key to answering many current apologetics questions. This is the biggest blind spot in our culture, so this one is a must-read (240 pages).</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tactics-Game-Discussing-Christian-Convictions/dp/0310282926/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383780557&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions</a>—<em>Book</em>: I think this is the most valuable apologetics resource out there, because it teaches you how to skillfully use <em>any</em> knowledge you have in conversation (208 pages).</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Unaborted-Socrates-Dramatic-Surrounding-Abortion/dp/0877848106/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_pap?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383603947&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=unaborted+socrates" target="_blank">The Unaborted Socrates</a>—<em>Book</em>: This book is excellent both at demonstrating good tactics and teaching pro-life apologetics (155 pages).</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Case-Resurrection-Jesus-Gary-Habermas/dp/0825427886/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_pap?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383603988&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=case+for+the+resurrection+of+jesus" target="_blank">The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus</a>—<em>Book</em>: The resurrection is central to Christianity, and Gary Habermas is the expert on this subject (384 pages).</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/If-God-Is-Good-Suffering/dp/160142132X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383604084&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil</a>—<em>Book</em>: Evil is another hot topic in apologetics right now. Don’t let the length of this book scare you; the chapters are short, readable, and compelling (528 pages).</li>
</ol>

<p>If you start planning for this now, you could easily begin on January 1.</p>
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title: Why Must the Cause of the Universe Be Personal?
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/09/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/why-must-the-cause-of-the-universe-be-personal-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>William Lane Craig explains why the timeless cause of the universe must be personal, not impersonal...in less than three minutes. Here’s the bottom line:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The only way to explain how we can have a temporal effect, with a beginning, arise from an eternal cause is if that cause is a personal agent endowed with freedom of the will, and therefore able spontaneously to create a new effect in time.</p>
</blockquote>

<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9" data-embed-id="v2mFogzBO-Y" data-styles="{&quot;width&quot;:&quot;100%&quot;}" style="width:100%"><iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" class="embed-responsive-item" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v2mFogzBO-Y?rel=0" tabindex="0"></iframe></div>

<p>(HT: <a href="https://twitter.com/LeeStrobel/status/397505272094420992" target="_blank">@LeeStrobel</a>)</p>
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title: Junk DNA?
topic: Science
author: Melinda Penner
date: 11/04/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/junk-dna-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>A frequent objection to a Designer of the universe and life is junk DNA. Darwinists claim that this DNA that has no apparent purpose is leftover residue from epochs of evolution, and they claim that a Designer would not have been so wasteful.</p>

<p>New studies are finding, however, that this DNA isn’t junk, and actually has a purpose. A recently published study finds that it regulates the other genes that have a more obvious purpose. One person described this DNA as the operating system for the rest.</p>

<p>A <a href="https://www.genengnews.com/insights/what-junk-dna-its-an-operating-system/" target="_blank">story</a> in <em>Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News</em> reports:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[A] report adds to growing experimental support for the idea that all that extra stuff in the human genes, once referred to as “junk DNA,”&nbsp;is more than functionless, space-filling material that happens to make up nearly 98% of the genome. The paper adds to a growing body of knowledge establishing a considerable role for this material in the regulation of gene expression and its potential role in human disease...</p>

<p>Back in the old days, the general wisdom had it that introns loaded into the human genome were basically useless. While some noncoding DNA is transcribed in noncoding RNA, such as transfer RNA, ribosomal RNA, regulatory RNA, or endogenous retroviruses, others produce RNA with no known function or identified utility to the cell.</p>

<p>But over the past few years, as high-powered analytical tools and genomic information have become available, the function of introns, such as transcription factor recognition sequences, has become better understood. And, as John Stamatoyannopoulos, M.D., associate professor of genome sciences and medicine at the University of Washington, points out, while only about 2% of the human genome codes for proteins, “Hidden in the remaining 98 percent are instructions that basically tell the genes how to switch on and off.”&nbsp;His laboratory focuses on disease-associated variants in regulatory regions of DNA.</p>
</blockquote>
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title: Did Jesus Not Die on the Cross?
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 11/04/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/did-jesus-not-die-on-the-cross-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for November 2013</em></p>

<p>It’s not uncommon to find people who deny that Jesus rose from the dead. After all, a resurrection is supernatural. Dying, on the other hand, is natural. Yet, strangely enough, there are people who deny that Jesus died on the cross. Who would believe such a thing? It turns out at least 20% of the world’s population thinks Christ never died.</p>

<p>That large group of people consists of the 1.5 billion Muslims that believe the Qur’an’s teaching in Surah 4:157: “That they said (in boast), ’We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah’;- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them.”&nbsp;Muslims think someone else who was given Jesus’&nbsp;appearance was crucified, while Christ was taken up to Heaven.</p>

<p>Christians have responded in various ways to this claim. Some attack the Qur’an’s authority, some challenge the verse’s translation, while others point to other Qur’anic passages that suggest Jesus died.</p>

<p>I take a different approach. The most powerful and straightforward evidence for Christ’s death comes from the New Testament. All four Gospels testify that Jesus died. That’s what I tell Muslims.</p>

<p>Wait a minute! You can’t say that to a Muslim. They don’t believe in the Bible.</p>

<p>Though Muslims are skeptical about the Bible, they should believe in the Gospels. Why? They have better <em>religious</em> and <em>historical</em> credentials than the Qur’an.</p>

<p>From a Muslim’s religious perspective, the Qur’an teaches that the Gospels are divine scripture. Surah 2:136 says that Muslims should “make no difference between”&nbsp;the Qur’an and Gospel of Jesus. Surah 29:46 commands Muslims to “believe in the revelation [The Qur’an] which has come down to us and in that [the Gospel] which came down to you.”&nbsp;Both of these verses—and several others in the Qur’an—teach the Gospels are divine revelation. Since the Gospels teach that Christ died, that’s what Muslims are therefore commanded to believe.</p>

<p>I know that most Muslims think the Bible is corrupted, but this is a cultural belief. The Qur’an doesn’t teach that. In fact, as I’ve written in <a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK331" target="_blank"><em>The Ambassador’s Guide to Islam</em></a>, it teaches the opposite—that the Bible is the uncorrupted word of God.</p>

<p>The Bible’s historical credentials also trump those of the Qur’an. The Gospels contain eyewitness reports of Christ’s death, whereas the Qur’an does not. The Gospels were written during the lifetime of those who saw Christ get crucified, whereas the Qur’an was written 600 years later. The Gospels were written in the geographical location of the event in question, whereas the Qur’an was written over 1,000 miles away.</p>

<p>The Gospels also report physiological details that are consistent with a modern medical understanding of death by crucifixion. <em>The Journal of American Medical Association</em>, a prestigious medical journal, published an article called, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ.”&nbsp;The authors studied many of the details surrounding Christ’s death: the scourging, the nails hammered through His hands and feet, the spear thrust into His chest, and the blood and water that flowed from his side. Based on the data, they concluded that Jesus died due to the rigors of crucifixion.</p>

<p>It’s also worth noting that the highly liberal Jesus Seminar believes Jesus died. This group of scholars represents the fringe of New Testament scholarship, rejecting all the miracles recorded in the Gospels. John Dominic Crossan, one of their leaders, not only denies the resurrection, but believes Jesus’&nbsp;body was probably buried in a shallow grave and eaten by wild dogs. Despite his highly skeptical view of the historical details of Jesus’&nbsp;life, he still believes Jesus died. “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be,”&nbsp;writes Crossan.</p>

<p>Several non-Christian sources record Christ’s death as well. Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, documents the death of Jesus. Tacitus, a Roman historian, also cites it. Lucian of Samosata, a Greek poet, and the Jewish Talmud both acknowledge that Jesus was killed, as well.</p>

<p>Given the preponderance of evidence, it’s reasonable to take the Gospels’&nbsp;testimony as credible while questioning the Qur’anic one. If the Muslim takes Qur’anic commands and good historical credentials seriously, then he should believe that Jesus died.</p>

<p>Thankfully, death is not the end of the story, as it was for Mohammed. On the third day, Jesus came to life again. It was good news for Him, and it’s good news for us. For because He conquered death, so will His followers one day because they are reconciled with God and forgiven.</p>
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title: The Centrality of Jesus’ Death Defies Relativism
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-centrality-of-jesus-death-defies-relativism
content:
            <div> 
		<p>There are many out there who see Christianity as being mainly about teaching us how to be better people. Sadly, this includes a large number of pastors who are passing on this too-common theology of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_therapeutic_deism" target="_blank">Moralistic Therapeutic Deism</a>. There’s a good possibility that many of these pastors are not doing this purposely, but because their preaching focuses on moral lessons, their congregations learn that the moral lessons are what’s important.</p>

<p>I’m convinced that this moralistic focus is a major contributor to a relativistic view of religion amongst Christians. After all, if the goal of religion is to teach us to be good people, one religion can do this as well as another. What reason do we have to say one is right and the other wrong if they’re all right in the way that matters?</p>

<p>This is why I think the religious relativism of Christians is but a symptom pointing to a much deeper problem—a lack of understanding of the Gospel, a lack of knowing that Christianity depends on something objective happening outside of ourselves rather than being just a set of good rules to live by.</p>

<p>The Christianity of the Bible, when it’s explicitly taught, leaves no room for relativism because it depends on an objective event that accomplished a particular purpose for us. You’re probably familiar with the <a href="http://greatcloud.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/gary-habermas-on-the-pre-pauline-creed-of-1-cor-15/" target="_blank">pre-biblical creed</a> recorded for us by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, clearly defining the Gospel:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you stand, by which also you are saved...</p>

<p>For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received [and here is the creed], that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Cross-Christ-John-Stott/dp/083083320X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1384813562&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank"><em>The Cross of Christ</em></a>, John Stott points out yet another part of New Testament history that proclaims the centrality of the cross:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The Lord’s Supper, which was instituted by Jesus, and which is the only regular commemorative act authorized by him, dramatizes neither his birth nor his life, neither his words nor his works, but only his death. Nothing could indicate more clearly the central significance which Jesus attached to his death. It was by his death that he wished above all else to be remembered. There is then, it is safe to say, no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This is not to take anything away from the resurrection, which is included in the 1 Corinthians creed, and without which Christ could not have “<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hebrews+9&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">entered</a> through the greater and more perfect tabernacle,...not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood,”&nbsp;“into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us,”&nbsp;to be not just our sacrifice, but our one and only <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hebrews%207:11-28&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">living high priest</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Jesus,...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.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>But it is to say that any proposed “gospel”&nbsp;that leaves out the defining historical moment of Christ on the cross is missing the point of Christianity, and to miss that point is to leave us with nothing but <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2013/02/god-cares-more-about-behavior-than-most-people-think.html" target="_blank">bad news</a>.</p>
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title: A Response to Matthew Vines: The Bible Doesn’t Support Same-Sex Relationships
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/05/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/a-response-to-matthew-vines-the-bible-doesn-t-support-same-sex-relationships
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Greg mentioned the article “<a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/50-hand-picked-christians-trained-to-convince-churches-to-re-interpret-scriptures-gay-boundaries-105342/" target="_blank">50 ’Hand-Picked’&nbsp;Christians Trained To Convince Churches To Re-Interpret Scripture’s Gay Boundaries</a>”&nbsp;on a recent <a href="/w/-gay-reformation-in-the-church-october-22-2013-" target="_blank">podcast</a>. Here’s an excerpt from the article:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Fifty hand-picked Christians were part of a seminal conference last week planned by Matthew Vines, a 23-year-old Christian who believes Scripture allows for monogamous homosexual activity, in an effort to spread the idea in the American church over the next decade.</p>

<p>Vines says he has had success in convincing lay members of churches over the last year that monogamous homosexual activity is allowed by Scripture, but is encountering resistance from Scriptural scholars. He is likely to encounter much more, say theologians...</p>

<p>Vines, a gay Christian, delivered a speech in March 2012 in which he argued that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality. The hour-long video of that speech has been viewed over 600,000 times on YouTube and has been the subject of debate among pastors and theologians.</p>

<p>He told [The Christian Post] that the writers of Scripture understood same-sex behavior as “an impulse toward excess,”&nbsp;much like gluttony or drunkenness. But the issue must be approached differently, he says, when discussing Christian gays who are living out “an expression of covenantal love in a faithful, monogamous relationship.”</p>

<p>Many Christians think they cannot believe in the full authority and inspiration of the Bible and at the same time support same-sex relationships, says Vines, though he hopes to convince them that isn’t the case.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Vines’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezQjNJUSraY" target="_blank">video</a> has been convincing laypeople, even if he is “encountering resistance from Scriptural scholars,”&nbsp;because a rebuttal requires very specific knowledge about the texts involved, and the truth is, most of us haven’t looked into this issue closely enough to be ready with an answer.</p>

<h2>James White’s Response</h2>

<p>This is why I wanted to post a link to <a href="https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/2012/05/23/gay-christianity-refuted/" target="_blank">James White’s response to Matthew Vines</a>. Please take the time to listen. It’s roughly five hours long, but if you listen to just 15-30 minutes a day, you’ll be finished in no time.</p>

<p>This issue and these arguments <a href="/w/worshipping-images-of-ourselves" target="_blank">aren’t going to go away</a>. I know this probably isn’t your favorite topic to spend time on, but we can’t ignore this. We need to be as prepared as Vines’s trainees if we’re to help the people in our churches who are struggling to understand this issue—including the people we love who have same-sex attractions. This is a topic worthy of our serious study because real people are making real decisions, and the question of which path will fulfill our purpose of “<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+peter+2%3A9&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">proclaiming</a> the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light”&nbsp;and which path will destroy us is a grave one.</p>

<h2>Christ Is Better Than Other Pleasures</h2>

<p>This isn’t about hate. If we are truly created by God, and if it’s true that our existence has a purpose, and our bodies have a purpose, and our sexuality has a <a href="/w/worshipping-images-of-ourselves" target="_blank">purpose</a>, then to twist any of those things is to slowly destroy ourselves. There’s a reason why Moses <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hebrews%2011:24-26&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">chose</a>&nbsp;“rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt”: he knew deprivation of some pleasures <em>with</em> God is a better life than one that fulfills immediate desires <em>without</em> Him. This is what we need to help our Christian brothers and sisters understand.</p>

<p>It might help for you to also hear this from someone who struggles with same-sex attractions and has chosen Christ over his desire for physical intimacy (a choice which, in itself, is an incredible testimony to the value of Christ), which is why I often recommend Wesley Hill’s <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Washed-Waiting-Reflections-Faithfulness-Homosexuality/dp/0310330033" target="_blank">Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality</a></em>.</p>
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title: They’re Not Mormon?
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/27/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/they-re-not-mormon-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><a href="http://www.fairmormon.org/" target="_blank">FairMormon</a>, (formerly the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research—FAIR) is a Mormon apologetics organization. I follow their blog, listen to their <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mormon-fair-cast/id397315546" target="_blank">podcasts</a> here and there, and have even attended one of their conferences, so I was interested to hear their president, Scott Gordon, <a href="http://issuesetc.org/2013/11/15/2-the-beliefs-of-mormonism-mormon-apologist-scott-gordon-111513/" target="_blank">interviewed on Issues, Etc.</a> (listen to a response from Bill McKeever <a href="http://issuesetc.org/2013/11/18/1-responding-to-mormon-apologist-scott-gordon-bill-mckeever-111813/" target="_blank">here</a>).</p>

<p>When asked, “What is the biggest popular misconception about Mormonism?”&nbsp;Gordon responded:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The biggest one probably is that we’re not Christian. Many times there are books out, and there are many popularists who try to make us as something other than Christian. Granted, I would agree that we’re not traditional Christian in many ways; but as far as, do we believe in Jesus Christ as our savior, do we believe in the Bible, do we believe in the foundational beliefs that other Christians believe in? Yeah, we’re very much Christian.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>But then the very next misconception he lists is this one:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>One that comes to mind for most people is that Mormons are polygamists—that we have more than one wife. And while it is true that back in the 1800s polygamy was practiced for a select few, currently if someone who is Mormon or LDS currently were to have more than one wife...they’re instantly excommunicated... So then people say, well what about all those Mormons practicing polygamy in southern Utah and northern Arizona? And my answer is, they’re not Mormon.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Gordon reserves the right to say the polygamists aren’t Mormon because he knows that the word “Mormon”&nbsp;refers to a specific set of doctrines and practices. If the polygamists were to say, “The biggest misconception about us is that we’re not Mormon; we believe in Joseph Smith as the prophet of the Restoration, we believe in the Book of Mormon, we believe in the foundational beliefs that other Mormons believe in, so yeah, we’re very much Mormon,”&nbsp;would Gordon be moved by this?</p>

<p>And were these polygamists to say they believe in the same “foundational beliefs”&nbsp;as Mormons, thereby assuming the exclusion of some beliefs that Mormons actually consider to be foundational (e.g., the <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/od/1" target="_blank">revelation</a> ending polygamy), Gordon would rightly see the mistake being made and reject it. In the very same way, he ought to be able to see that the tenets of Christianity Mormons exclude <em>are considered foundational by Christians</em>.</p>

<p>The LDS church distances itself from polygamists, but surely the differences between tri-theism and monotheism, between a <a href="/w/lds-view-of-atonement-clarified" target="_blank">gospel of a plan to pay a debt to Jesus</a> and a gospel of grace (which <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=eph%202:1-10&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">seats us with the Father</a> for eternity only by grace), and between viewing man as the <a href="/w/is-god-an-exalted-man-" target="_blank">same kind of being as God</a> and viewing him as a creation of God, are far greater and more foundational than the difference between having one wife and having more than one. And contrary to what Gordon claims in the interview, the longer you talk to Mormons (if you take the time to define your terms carefully), the two theologies move <a href="http://www.ldslearning.org/celestial-marriage.pdf" target="_blank"><em>farther apart</em></a>, not closer.</p>

<p>If Mormons won’t allow polygamists to redefine Mormonism in order to include themselves, they ought not demand that Christians accept a redefinition from Mormons as to what’s foundational to Christianity.</p>

<p>None of this is meant to be an insult to Mormons (see “<a href="/w/-mormons-aren-t-christians-is-not-an-epithet" target="_blank">’Mormons Aren’t Christians’&nbsp;Is Not an Epithet</a>”&nbsp;for more on this); it’s merely a recognition of the very real, very significant differences between our two religions. Joseph Smith himself didn’t shy away from these differences when he said regarding his <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/js-h/1.15-20?lang=eng#14" target="_blank">First Vision</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I asked the Personages [the Father and the Son] who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects [of Christianity] was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)��and which I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight...</p>
</blockquote>

<p>As I wrote in the <a href="/w/-mormons-aren-t-christians-is-not-an-epithet" target="_blank">post</a> linked above:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Mormons may believe that they are more truly following Christ and His plan of salvation than we are (since they have the restored priesthood, the temples, the covenants and ordinances, and more scripture) and so, are more deserving of the name Christian; but even if they were correct about this, to appropriate the name Christian now is to imply that they’re just another denomination, and that is just confusing and misleading. And to demand that we call them Christian is to ask us to say that the nature of God, man, and salvation—the very heart of Christianity—is unimportant, or at least, less important than mere moral behavior. It’s not fair or reasonable to ask this of us.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I have to admit, I don’t understand why a Mormon would want to gloss over the differences between us. Be straightforward, and fight for the truth! We will respect you for it. Gordon said, “[There are] different denominations who are trying to tear down beliefs of others, which I don’t think is ever a good thing.”&nbsp;But this is exactly what lovers of God and the truth do, as modeled by Paul:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Corinthians%2010:3-5&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">2 Corinthians 10:3-5</a>).</p>
</blockquote>
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title: Daring God to Do Evil Makes Atheists Nervous
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/21/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/daring-god-to-do-evil-makes-atheists-nervous
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Researchers in Finland decided to <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10508619.2013.771991#.Uo0SPo3B3cE" target="_blank">examine</a>&nbsp;“whether atheists exhibit evidence of emotional arousal when they dare God to cause harm to themselves and their intimates.”&nbsp;I’m not sure how much can be concluded definitively from this study, but it’s certainly interesting. From <a href="http://www.psmag.com/blogs/news-blog/emotional-reactions-of-atheists-reveal-echoes-of-belief-56395/" target="_blank"><em>Pacific Standard</em></a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Some of the statements were direct dares to a deity (“I dare God to make my parents drown”). Others were similarly disturbing, but did not reference God (“It’s OK to kick a puppy in the face”). Still others were bland and neutral (“I hope it’s not raining today”).</p>

<p>The arousal levels of the believers and non-believers followed precisely the same pattern: Higher for both the God dares and otherwise unpleasant statements, and lower for the neutral ones.</p>

<p>Compared to the atheists, the believers reported feeling more uncomfortable reciting the God dares. But skin conductance data revealed the underlying emotional reactions of the two groups were essentially the same. This suggests that taunting God made the atheists more upset than they were letting on (even to themselves).</p>

<p>Of course, perhaps it wasn’t the presence of God, but rather the subject matter of the statements (such as the death of their parents) that caused the atheists’&nbsp;emotional arousal. The second experiment was designed to test that hypothesis. It featured 19 Finnish atheists, who participated in an expanded version of the first experiment. It included 10 additional statements - variations on the God dares which excluded any mention of supernatural forces. For example, in addition to “I dare God to turn all my friends against me,”&nbsp;they read out loud the statement: “I wish all of my friends would turn against me.”</p>

<p>The results: The atheists showed greater emotional arousal when reading the God-related statements than while reading the otherwise nearly identical sentences that omitted the almighty. To the researchers, this indicates that “even atheists have difficulty daring God to harm themselves and their loved ones.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The researchers offer a few different <a href="http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2013/11/atheists-get-sweaty-when-daring-god.html?m=1" target="_blank">possible explanations</a> for this, and of course I favor the one that matches Romans 1: we can suppress our knowledge of God’s existence, but we can never completely escape it.</p>

<p>But there’s one possibility the researchers don’t seem to have considered (also suggested <a href="http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2013/11/atheists-get-sweaty-when-daring-god.html?m=1" target="_blank">here</a>). Since persons have the ability to act, I do think there could be something about daring a <em>person</em> to do evil, or speaking to a person whom one thinks is evil (as many atheists believe the Christian God is), that causes distress, even if the dared individual doesn’t currently have the power to carry it out or never existed at all. I wish they would have controlled for this by also having people dare someone like Voldemort or Hitler to do something evil. My suspicion is that neither of these dares would cause the distress of daring God, but I’d love to see that tested.</p>

<p>Incidentally, I’m surprised Christians agreed to take part in this (assuming at least some of the “believers”&nbsp;studied were Christians). I don’t think their agreement shows they don’t truly believe in God (I’m sure they assumed God would not take their coerced dares seriously), but I fear it might show they think lightly of God’s holiness, being willing to use His Name in this manner. Or perhaps it just reveals an unwillingness to refuse the instructions of men in white coats. Neither possibility is a good one.</p>

<p>(HT: <a href="https://twitter.com/drewdyck/status/402886442440855552" target="_blank">@drewdyck</a>)</p>
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title: The Early Power of the Press
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 11/14/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-early-power-of-the-press
content:
            <div> 
		<p><a href="http://mayflowerhistory.com/brewster-william/" target="_blank">William Brewster</a> was one of the leading separatists who protested religious intolerance in England.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Brewster was instrumental in establishing a Separatist church with Richard Clyfton, and they often held their meetings in the Manor house. Brewster and the others were eventually found and forced out, and fleeing prosecution and persecution they headed to Amsterdam in 1608, and moved to Leiden, Holland in 1609. Brewster became the church’s Elder, responsible for seeing that the congregation’s members carried themselves properly, both helping and admonishing them when necessary.</p>

<p>In Leiden, Brewster working with Thomas Brewer, Edward Winslow, and others, began working a printing press and publishing religious books and pamphlets that were then illegally conveyed into England. Brewster also employed himself teaching University of Leiden students English. By 1618, the English authorities were onto him and his printing press, and had the Dutch authorities in pursuit of him. Thomas Brewer was arrested and held in the University of Leiden’s prison, but Brewster managed to evade the authorities and went into hiding for a couple years.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>As one of the leading church elders, Brewster traveled to the new world on the Mayflower and was instrumental in leading the community of believers committed to the freedom to practice their religious convictions.</p>
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title: Nazi Paganism
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/nazi-paganism
content:
            <div> 
		<p>We rarely hear about the pagan religious ideas promoted by the Nazis, but every once in while, I come across another story. This one is from an article by Timothy George at <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/11/giving-thanks-in-hitlers-reich/timothy-george" target="_blank">First Things</a>, who wrote about Paul Schneider, “the first Protestant pastor to die in a concentration camp at the hands of the Nazis”:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Schneider...was asked to preside at the funeral of a seventeen-year-old member of the Hitler Youth named Karl Moog. Before the benediction had been pronounced, the local Nazi district leader, Heinrich Nadig, interrupted the service to declare that young Karl had now crossed over into the heavenly storm troop of Horst Wessel, to which Schneider replied: “I do not know if there is a storm of Horst Wessel in eternity, but may the Lord God bless your departure from time and your entry into eternity.”</p>

<p>Sturmführer Horst Wessel was a Nazi party activist and author of the popular Nazi hymn “The Flag on High”&nbsp;(also called the Horst-Wessel-Lied). After his violent death in 1930, he was elevated as a hero in the Nazi pantheon. The Wessel story was incorporated into the pagan mythology the Nazis were seeking to revive. Alfred Rosenberg, the master of Nazi ideology, claimed that Wessel had not really died but now led a celestial storm troop. Those who died in the service of the Nazis, like young Karl Moog, were summoned to join the Wessel storm troop above. Just six months prior to the funeral incident, the Nazi bimonthly <em>Der Brunnen</em> declared: “How high Horst Wessel towers over that Jesus of Nazareth—that Jesus who pleaded that the bitter cup be taken from him. How unattainably high all Horst Wessels stand above Jesus!”</p>

<p>Pastor Schneider refused to subordinate the Christian Gospel to such a pagan myth. When Nadig repeated his graveside claim about Horst Wessel, Schneider said: “I protest. This is a church ceremony, and as a Protestant pastor, I am responsible for the pure teaching of the Holy Scriptures.”</p>

<p>After this confrontation, Schneider was placed in prison for five days, but he did not back down.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Eric Metaxes wrote a bit about Nazi paganism in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bonhoeffer-Pastor-Martyr-Prophet-Spy/dp/1595552464/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1384901325&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank"><em>Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy</em></a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Since Hitler had no religion other than himself, his opposition to Christianity and the church was less ideological than practical. That was not the case for many leaders of the Third Reich. Alfred Rosenberg, Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and others were bitterly anti-Christian and were ideologically opposed to Christianity, and wanted to replace it with a religion of their own devising. Under their leadership, said Shirer [in <em>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich</em>], “the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I would love to find a resource that delves more thoroughly into this topic. Your recommendations are welcome.</p>
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title: Free to Say We’ve Sinned
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/07/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/free-to-say-we-ve-sinned
content:
            <div> 
		<p>1 John 1:10 is one of the most freeing verses in the Bible:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>But let me back up a little bit.</p>

<p>This verse comes at the end of a passage that starts off in a terrifying way:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth...</p>
</blockquote>

<p>There is no darkness in our holy God. At all. And there is no fellowship between God and sin.</p>

<p>This is as far as atheists see into Christianity—an unforgiving, impossibly high moral law enforced by a fearful Judge. They accuse us of “living in fear,”&nbsp;and they want no part of that kind of life. They’re good people, thank you very much, and they don’t need anyone making them feel guilty.</p>

<p>But now it’s time to finish that passage:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>...but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Our ongoing sins are <em>assumed</em> in this passage, and the solution offered is complete. This is the <em>end</em> of fear and guilt, not the fuel of it. And that’s where 1 John 1:10 comes in. Do you feel the strength of it now?</p>

<blockquote>
<p>If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>When you hide your sin, pretending to be a perfect Christian, you’re actually telling the world that God is a liar. Did Jesus, or did Jesus not, need to suffer and die for your present sins? When you feign perfection, you’re saying you didn’t need Him to do this for you.</p>

<p>Can you see now how freeing this verse is? You no longer have to be afraid of people finding out about your sin. You have no need to hide. In fact, as counter-intuitive as it feels when you’re cowering in the dark, worrying about embarrassing yourself and Christianity should your sinfulness become known, it’s only when you’re <em>open</em> about your sin that people can see you’re resting on <em>Christ’s</em> work for you, not your own perfection. <em>This is when you glorify Christ the most</em>. Rather than being a source of fear, your sin reveals that God is a truth-teller, for He said that you are a sinner. He said that your sin deserves judgment. He said that you need grace. He said that He’s given it.</p>

<p>Here I give Paul’s warning in Romans 6:1–4:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>We don’t intentionally increase our sin in order to glorify Christ, we recognize and openly acknowledge the sin we already have because <em>Christ’s grace</em> is glorified through our visible trust in that grace.</p>

<p>This is, after all, why we were created.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[He] seated us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6–7).</p>
</blockquote>
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title: Harry Potter Is a Danger to Modern Society (In a Good Way)
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/30/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/harry-potter-is-a-danger-to-modern-society-in-a-good-way-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>In his insightful article “<a href="http://humanepursuits.com/why-harry-potter-is-great-literature/" target="_blank">Why Harry Potter Is Great Literature</a>,”&nbsp;Brian Brown argues that J.K. Rowling’s “Potter books are in the tradition of the great English novels, deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence, and are easily the most morally and socially insightful works of fantasy published in this generation.”</p>

<p>He explains the basis for this claim:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Fantasy appeals to us, to put it crudely, because of the relationship between magic and morality. An alternate world filled with strange and wonderful things, a world defined by imagination, gives us a setting in which to (consciously or not) engage with moral questions free from the complications and biases with which we engage our own setting. This can be blindingly obvious, as with Lewis’s explicitly allegorical Narnia, or more subtle, as with Tolkien’s stubbornly not allegorical Middle Earth. Fantasy, mythology, and fairy tales allow an author to shape our unconscious ideas about what our own world should be like—without beating us over the head with them or even stating them outright. Fantasy stories can tell you a lot about what a civilization values, and the best fantasy stories help a civilization value the right things.</p>

<p>Rowling does both.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Harry Potter is a welcome respite from the Disney story of the boy (or girl) who sacrifices everything to follow his dream, proving his worth and finding fame in the end. Brown argues that the Potter series, contrary to the Disney template, is profoundly countercultural; its characters find their identity in their choices, loyalties, place, prudence, and families—not by pursuing their dreams and “finding themselves.”&nbsp;For example:</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>Our choices.</strong> It is these, mentor Dumbledore tells an insecure Harry, that show who we truly are. No Aladdin-style “his worth lies far within”&nbsp;nonsense here. Over and over in <em>Harry Potter</em>, good triumphs when somebody who has no business being a hero—dim-witted Neville Longbottom, dumpy mother of seven Mrs. Weasley, most of all Harry—makes a choice to be stupid, to “fight the unbeatable foe,”&nbsp;just because it’s the right thing to do.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The full <a href="http://humanepursuits.com/why-harry-potter-is-great-literature/" target="_blank">article</a> is worth reading for the rest of the details. Brown concludes:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>In short, Rowling (who must clearly be seen as a danger to modern society) seems to think that children find—<em>make</em>, really—their place in the adult world by the strength of their character, by the structures of their connections with the past and with loved ones, and not by “finding themselves.”</p>

<p>Tellingly, Harry never finds a passion in life, nor does he ever have much of an idea of what he wants to do with his life. The very thing most kids today are told to seek—Harry never finds it or even seriously looks for it. He doesn’t need to. Best of all, in almost Austenian fashion, Rowling sets these stories in a school, where parallels with Harry’s day-to-day battles with classmates and teachers make clear that all the virtues that make good triumph over evil are the same virtues that make the difference in real life.</p>

<p>Harry Potter’s is a reactionary world, a real step back in the march of progress. Families and traditional institutions are central, government experts are viewed with distrust, and the celebrity hero doesn’t want to be a celebrity. And likewise unfashionable is the path by which Harry and his friends seek adulthood. They find meaning in responsibility, learn respect for rightful authority, and sacrifice their individuality and even their lives to preserve a very messy world that seems beyond saving.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>If you’re anything like me, you tend to feel a little guilty spending time on novels when you have a stack of “serious”&nbsp;non-fiction to get through. This is a grave mistake. Feeding our moral imagination is part of our education (as Joe Rigney argues <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2013/09/discipled-by-narnia.html" target="_blank">here</a>). Goodness, truth, and beauty are worth contemplating in story form, so give yourself permission to partake. If <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00CJG28U8/ref=sr_1_1_acs_b_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1385059092&amp;sr=8-1-acs" target="_blank">Harry Potter</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/J-R-R-Tolkien-4-Book-Boxed-Tie-/dp/0345538374/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1385059129&amp;sr=8-5&amp;keywords=lord+of+the+rings" target="_blank">Middle Earth</a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00CKCX788/ref=sr_1_1_acs_b_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1385059166&amp;sr=8-1-acs" target="_blank">Narnia</a> aren’t your thing, find something else beautiful that is. How about one of these? (More ideas <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pastors-Classics-Timeless-Ministry-Literature/dp/0801071976/?tag=thegospcoal-20" target="_blank">here</a>.)</p>

<ul>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Watership-Down-Novel-Richard-Adams/dp/0743277708/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1385057460&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank">Watership Down</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Peace-Like-River-Leif-Enger/dp/0802139256/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1385057488&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=lief+enger" target="_blank">Peace Like a River</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wind-Willows-Kenneth-Grahame/dp/1492908401/ref=sr_1_3_title_1_pap?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1385057995&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=the+wind+in+the+willows" target="_blank">The Wind in the Willows</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/080665130X/thegospcoal-20" target="_blank">The Hammer of God</a></li>
	<li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Till-We-Have-Faces-Retold-ebook/dp/B01EFM8NMK/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=Till+We+Have+Faces&amp;qid=1587609504&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank">Till We Have Faces</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gilead-Novel-Marilynne-Robinson/dp/031242440X/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_pap?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1385058204&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=giliad" target="_blank">Gilead</a></li>
</ul>
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title: Who Would God Discriminate Against?
topic: Philosophy
author: Melinda Penner
date: 11/06/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/who-would-god-discriminate-against-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>This question is <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/who-would-god-discriminat_b_4221844" target="_blank">asked</a> regarding the Employment Non-Discrimination Act moving through the Senate. It would protect homosexual and transgender Americans from hiring discrimination. A better question might be, Who would God force to violate their consciences that are informed by His Word? But of course, the way you ask the question frames the debate.</p>

<p>While the law exempts religious organizations, it does not protect business owners with religious convictions. While all people should be treated with dignity, it’s also important that the religious liberties protected in our Constitution be respected, as well. Violating constitutional rights isn’t justified by legislating against discrimination.</p>

<p>Note in the WaPo article linked above that the author writes that the “faith denominations”&nbsp;that support the legislation “run the gamut,”&nbsp;and she cites a number of denominations that “run the gamut”&nbsp;from the liberal to the extremely liberal. That’s actually not much of a gamut.</p>

<p>Andrew Walker, the Director of Policy Studies with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, provides a <a href="http://www.dennyburk.com/enda-and-the-christian-response-andrewtwalk-erlc/" target="_blank">very helpful perspective</a> on this issue and legislation.</p>

<p>I was reading Ephesians 6 this morning and reflected on the first piece of armor we’re told to take up to stand firm—it’s the belt of truth. We cannot sacrifice the truth of what God has revealed to us, or we lose before we’ve even begun to stand.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth... (Ephesians 6:13-14).</p>
</blockquote>
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title: The Church: One Family, One Body, One Temple
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/26/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-church-one-family-one-body-one-temple
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Nick Roen, who has same-sex attractions, suggests “<a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/an-alternative-script-for-same-sex-attraction" target="_blank">An Alternative Script for Same-Sex Attraction</a>”&nbsp;for the church to offer Christians who reject the world’s encouragement to fulfill this desire because of their greater desire to follow Christ:</p>

<blockquote>
<h2>More Than Prohibitions</h2>

<p>Many Christians answer this question [of how the Christian with same-sex attractions ought to live] by appealing to the prohibitions of Scripture. They point to the Bible’s clear teaching that homosexual activity is sinful because it goes against the grain of the created order (<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Genesis%202.18" target="_blank">Genesis 2:18</a>, <a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Genesis%202.23%E2%80%9324" target="_blank">23-24</a>), and is therefore outside the boundaries God has set for acceptable sexual expression (<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Romans%201.27" target="_blank">Romans 1:27</a>; <a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/1%20Corinthians%206.9%E2%80%9310" target="_blank">1 Corinthians 6:9-10</a>).</p>

<p>Christians are right to appeal to the authority of the Bible for the manner in which we should conduct our lives (<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/2%20Timothy%203.16" target="_blank">2 Timothy 3:16</a>). However, if prohibition is the only message that those with homosexual desires (Christian and non-Christian) hear from the church, then our message is incomplete.</p>

<h2>Saying Yes to Something Better</h2>

<p>What the church needs is an alternative script. And it must be a holistic script that accounts for the real emotions and desires of those with SSA. We can’t live a life of only saying, “No!”&nbsp;to our desires. We need to be able to say “Yes!”&nbsp;to something greater, something better.</p>

<p>The most basic—and the most glorious—thing that I have said “Yes!”&nbsp;to is Jesus. The joys of following Jesus are everlasting and complete (<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Psalm%2016.11" target="_blank">Psalm 16:11</a>; <a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Mark%2010.29" target="_blank">Mark 10:29</a>) and make the temporary promises of sin seem woefully lacking. However, following Jesus does not make my yearnings for human intimacy and companionship magically disappear. What does Christianity have to say to those areas?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>God has brought us together as a new “people for God’s own possession, so that [we] may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called [us] out of darkness into His marvelous light”&nbsp;(<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20peter%202:9&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">1 Peter 2:9</a>). We’re siblings adopted into God’s family (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=eph%201:3-9&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Ephesians 1:5</a>). Every person in the church is a needed member of one body (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20cor%2012:12-31&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">1 Corinthians 12:12-31</a>). We’re living stones being “fitted together”&nbsp;into one building around Christ, the corner stone (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=eph+2%3A19-22&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Ephesians 2:19-22</a>). These images depict a profound interdependence, which we’re told is necessary “for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ”&nbsp;(<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=eph%204:11-13&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Ephesians 4:12-13</a>).</p>

<p>Roen recommends specific “areas of church life to cultivate,”&nbsp;but the bottom line for him is that the church needs to intentionally build the kind of close relationships between its members that reflects this biblical interdependence—for people with same-sex attractions, for singles, for everyone.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>What if they heard not simply, “Don’t have that relationship!”&nbsp;but, “You are welcome in the church, and in all these relationships, and we will seek to support you in your walk of faith with community, loving relationships, and hospitality”?</p>

<p>That is the beginnings of a wonderful alternative script.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read the rest of <a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/an-alternative-script-for-same-sex-attraction" target="_blank">Nick Roen’s post</a>.</p>
</div>

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title: Do You Take the Bible Literally?
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 11/01/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/do-you-take-the-bible-literally-1
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I never like the question, “Do you take the Bible literally?”&nbsp;It comes up with some frequency, and it deserves a response. But I think it’s an ambiguous—and, therefore, confusing—question, making it awkward to answer.</p>

<p>Clearly, even those of us with a high view of Scripture don’t take <em>everything</em> 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 <em>seriously</em> accounts others find fanciful and far-fetched: a man made from mud (Adam), loaves and fishes miraculously multiplied, vivified corpses rising from graves, etc.</p>

<p>A short “yes”&nbsp;or “no”&nbsp;response to the “Do you take the Bible literally?”&nbsp;question, then, would not be helpful. Neither answer gives the full picture. In fact, I think it’s the wrong question since frequently something else is driving the query.</p>

<h2>Taking “Literally”&nbsp;Literally</h2>

<p>Let’s start with a definition. According to the <em>New Oxford American Dictionary</em>, the word “literal”&nbsp;means “taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or allegory, free from exaggeration or distortion.”&nbsp;Why do people balk at this common-sense notion when it comes to the Bible or, more precisely, certain passages in the Bible?</p>

<p>Let’s face it, even non-Christians read the Bible in its “usual or most basic sense”&nbsp;most of the time on points that are not controversial. They readily take statements like “love your neighbor as yourself”&nbsp;or “remember the poor”&nbsp;at face value. When citing Jesus’&nbsp;directive, “Do not judge,”&nbsp;they’re not deterred by the challenge, “You don’t take the Bible literally, do you?”</p>

<p>No, when critics agree with the point of a passage, they take the words in their ordinary and customary sense. They naturally understand that language works a certain way in everyday communication, and it never occurs to them to think otherwise.</p>

<p>Unless, of course, the details of the text trouble them for some reason.</p>

<p>What of the opening chapters of Genesis? Is this a straightforward account describing historical events the way they actually happened? Were Adam and Eve real people, the first human beings? Was Adam created from dust? Did Eve really come from Adam’s rib? Did Jonah actually survive three days in the belly of a great fish? Did a virgin really have a baby? Such claims seem so fanciful to many people it’s hard for them to take the statements at face value.</p>

<p>Other times, the critic simply does not like what he reads. He abandons the “literal”&nbsp;approach when he comes across something in the text that offends his own philosophical, theological, or moral sensibilities. Jesus the only way of salvation? No way. Homosexuality a sin? Please. A “loving”&nbsp;God sending anyone to the eternal torture of Hell? Not a chance.</p>

<p>Notice the objection with these teachings is not based on some ambiguity making alternate interpretations plausible, since the Scripture affirms these truths with the same clarity as “love your neighbor.”&nbsp;No, these verses simply offend. Suddenly, the critic becomes a skeptic and sniffs, “You don’t take the Bible <em>literally</em>, do you?”</p>

<p>This subtle double standard, I think, is usually at the heart of the taking-the-Bible-literally challenge. Sometimes the ruse is hard to unravel.</p>

<p>An example might be helpful here.</p>

<h2>Literal vs. Lateral</h2>

<p>In the Law of Moses, homosexual activity was punishable by death (Lev. 18:22-23 and 20:13). Therefore (the charge goes), any Christian who takes the Bible literally must advocate the execution of homosexuals.</p>

<p>Of course, the strategy with this move is obvious: If we don’t promote executing homosexuals, we can’t legitimately condemn their behavior, since both details are in the Bible. If we don’t take the Bible literally in the first case, we shouldn’t in the second case, either. That’s being inconsistent.</p>

<p>How do we escape the horns of this dilemma? By using care and precision with our definitions, that’s how.</p>

<p>Here’s our first question: When Moses wrote the Law, did he expect the Jewish people to take those regulations literally? If you’re not sure how to answer, let me ask it another way. When an ordinance is passed in your local state (California, in my case), do you think the legislators intend its citizens to understand the words of the regulations “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. The same would be true for the Mosaic Law. Moses meant it the way he wrote it.</p>

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

<p>The simple answer is no. Here’s why. Just because a biblical command is intended to be understood <em>literally</em>, does not mean it is intended to be applied <em>laterally</em>, that is, universally across the board to all peoples at all times in all places.</p>

<p>Consider this situation. 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, in its ordinary sense. He had no reason to think otherwise. However, because Jesus’&nbsp;command to Peter was <em>literal</em> does not mean the same command applies <em>laterally</em> to everyone else. <em>We’re</em> not obliged to cast nets into deep water just because Peter was.</p>

<p>Here’s another way of looking at it. No matter what state you live in, the California legal codes are to be <em>read</em> literally, but don’t have <em>lateral</em> application to all states. They only apply to those in California.</p>

<p>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 them. Yet only those under its jurisdiction are obliged to obey its precepts.</p>

<p>The Jews in the theocracy were expected to obey the legal code God gave them, including the prohibition of and punishment for homosexuality. It was not the legal code God gave to gentiles, however. Therefore, even if the words of the Mosaic Law are to be taken literally by those under the jurisdiction of that code, this does not mean that in our current circumstances we are governed by the details of the provisions of that Law.</p>

<p>A clarification is necessary here. Am I saying that nothing written in the Mosaic Law is ever applicable to Christians or other gentiles or that there are no universal moral obligations that humanity shares with the Jews of Moses’&nbsp;time. No, I’m not saying that.</p>

<p>Though Moses gave legal statutes for Jews under the theocracy, that Law in some cases still reflects moral universals that have application for those outside the nation of Israel. Yes, we can glean wisdom and moral guidance from the Law of Moses for our own legal codes, but there are limits. Working out those details is a different discussion, however. <sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sup></p>

<p>The question here is not whether we <em>take</em> the Mosaic Law literally, but whether we are now <em>under</em> that legal code. We are not. That law was meant for Jews living under a theocracy defined by their unique covenant with God. Simply because a directive appears in the Mosaic Law does not, <em>by that fact alone</em>, make it obligatory for those living outside of Israel’s commonwealth.</p>

<p>Americans are a mixture of peoples in a representative republic governed by a different set of decrees than the Jews under Moses. We are not obliged to obey everything that came down from Sinai. Just because it was commanded of the Nation of Israel does not necessarily mean it is commanded of us. If anyone thinks otherwise, he is duty-bound to take his net and cast it into deep water.</p>

<p>That confusion aside, we’re still faced with our original question: When do we take the Bible literally?</p>

<h2>Reading the Ordinary Way</h2>

<p>Here’s how I would lay the groundwork for an answer. If I’m asked if I take the Bible literally, I would say I think that’s the wrong question. I’d say instead that I take the Bible in its <em>ordinary</em> sense, that is, I try to take the things recorded there with the precision I think the writer intended.</p>

<p>I realize this reply might also be a bit ambiguous, but here, I think, that’s a strength. Hopefully, my comment will prompt a request for clarification. This is exactly what I want. I’d clarify by countering with a question: “Do you read the <em>sports pag</em>e literally?”</p>

<p>If I asked you this question, I think you’d pause because there is a sense in which everyone reads the sports page in a <em>straightforward</em> way. Certain factual information is part of every story in that section. However, you wouldn’t take everything written in a woodenly literal way that ignores the conventions of the craft.</p>

<p>“<em>Literally</em>?”&nbsp;you might 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 literal. If he seems to be using a figure of speech, then I’d read his statement that way, figuratively, not literally.”</p>

<p>Exactly. Sportswriters use a particular style to communicate the details of athletic contests clearly. They choose precise (and sometimes imaginative) words and phrases to convey a solid sense of the particulars in an entertaining way.</p>

<p>Sportswriters routinely use words like “annihilated,”&nbsp;“crushed,”&nbsp;“mangled,”&nbsp;“mutilated,”&nbsp;“stomped,”&nbsp; and “pounded,”&nbsp;yet no one speculates about literal meanings. Readers don’t scratch their heads wondering if cannibalism was involved when they read “the Anaheim Angels devoured the St. Louis Cardinals.”</p>

<p>We recognize such constructions as figures of speech used to communicate in colorful ways events that actually (“literally”) took place. In fact, we never give those details a second thought because we understand how language works.</p>

<p>When a writer seems to be communicating facts in a straightforward fashion, we read them as such. When we encounter obvious figures of speech, we take them that way, too.</p>

<p>That’s the normal way to read the sports page. It’s also the normal—and responsible—way to read any work, including the Bible. Always ask, “What is this writer trying to communicate?”&nbsp;This is exactly what I’m after when I say, “I take the Bible in its ordinary sense.”</p>

<p>Of course, someone may differ with the clear point the Bible is making. Fair enough. There’s nothing dishonest about disagreement. Or they might think some Christian is mistaken on its meaning. Misinterpretation is always possible. Conjuring up some meaning that has little to do with the words the writer used, though, is not a legitimate alternative.</p>

<p>If someone disagrees with the obvious sense of a passage, ask them for the reasons they think the text should be an exception to the otherwise sound “ordinary sense”&nbsp;rule. Their answer will tell you if their challenge is intellectually honest, or if they’re just trying to dismiss biblical claims they simply don’t like.</p>

<h2>Two Thoughts on Metaphor</h2>

<p>Reading any writing the ordinary way requires we understand two points about figurative speech, both implicit in the concept of metaphor.</p>

<p>The <em>New Oxford American Dictionary</em> defines metaphor as “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable...a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else.”&nbsp;So, metaphors take one meaning of a word and then creatively leverage it into another meaning to make an impact on a reader.</p>

<p>Here is the first point to be clear on: All metaphors (or other forms of figurative writing) rely <em>first</em> on literal definitions <em>before</em> they can be of any use as figures of speech.</p>

<p>All words must first be understood in their “usual or most basic sense”&nbsp;before they can be used metaphorically. We find, for example, the word “shepherd”&nbsp;prominently featured in the 23rd Psalm. Do you see that we must first understand the literal meaning of “shepherd”&nbsp;before the phrase “the Lord is my shepherd”&nbsp;has any figurative power?</p>

<p>This point is critical for accurate biblical interpretation. Here’s why.</p>

<p>Sometimes we attempt to solve interpretive problems by digging through a Bible dictionary. This can be a helpful place to start, but since all figurative language trades in some way on dictionary definitions, the dictionary is not the final word. It can never tell you what <em>use</em> a specific writer is <em>making</em> of any particular word or phrase.</p>

<p>Strictly speaking, since no word is a metaphor in itself, words cannot be used metaphorically unless they’re embedded in a context. Therefore, it makes no sense to ask of a solitary word, “Is the word meant literally?”&nbsp;because the word standing on its own gives no indication.</p>

<p>Dictionaries by definition can only deal with words in isolation. Other things—context, genre, flow of thought, etc.—determine if the word’s literal sense is being applied in a non-literal way, symbolically “regarded as representative”&nbsp;of something else.</p>

<p>Take two sentences, “The sunshine streamed through my window,”&nbsp;and, “Sweetheart, you’re a ray of sunshine to me this morning.”&nbsp;Sunshine’s literal <em>meaning</em> is the same in each case. However, it is <em>used</em> literally in the first sentence, but metaphorically in the second. Further, unless my wife understands the literal meaning of “sunshine,”&nbsp;she will never understand the compliment I’m offering her in a poetic sort of way.</p>

<p>So first, literal definitions must be in place first before a word can be used figuratively. Second, metaphors are always meant to <em>clarify</em>, not <em>obscure</em>.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2">2</a></sup></p>

<p>There’s a sense in which figurative speech drives an author’s meaning home in ways that words taken in the ordinary way could never do. “All good allegory,”&nbsp;C.S. Lewis notes, “exists not to hide, but to reveal, to make the inner world more palpable by giving it an (imagined) concrete embodiment.”<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3">3</a></sup></p>

<p>Figurative speech communicates literal truth in a more precise and powerful way than ordinary language can on its own. The strictly literal comment, “Honey, your presence makes me feel good today”&nbsp;doesn’t pack the punch that the “sunshine”&nbsp;figure provides. The metaphor makes my precise point more powerfully than “words in their usual or most basic sense”&nbsp;could accomplish.</p>

<p>Remember, even when metaphor is in play, <em>some literal message is always intended</em>. Hell may not have literal flames,<sup id="fnref:4"><a href="#fn:4">4</a></sup> but the reality is at least as gruesome, ergo the figure.</p>

<p>Once again, it’s always right to ask, “What is the <em>precise meaning</em> the writer is trying to communicate with his colorful language?”&nbsp;But how do we do that? Here I have a suggestion.</p>

<h2>The Most Important Thing</h2>

<p>If there was one bit of wisdom, one rule of thumb, one useful tip I could offer to help you solve the riddle of Scriptural meaning, it’s this: Never read a Bible verse. That’s right, never read a Bible <em>verse</em>. Instead, always read a <em>paragraph</em>—at least.</p>

<p>On the radio I use this simple rule to help me answer the majority of Bible questions I’m asked, even when I’m not familiar with the particular passage. When I quickly survey the paragraph containing the verse in question, the larger context almost always provides the information I need to help me understand what’s going on.</p>

<p>This works because of a basic rule of all communication: Meaning flows from the top down, from the larger units to the smaller units. The key to the meaning of any verse comes from the paragraph, not just from the individual words.</p>

<p>Here’s how it works. First, get the big picture. Look at the broader context of the book. What type of writing is it—history, poetry, proverb, letter? Different genres have different rules for reading them.</p>

<p>Next, stand back from the verse and look for breaks in the passage that identify major units of thought. Then ask yourself, “What in this paragraph or group of paragraphs gives any clue to the meaning of the verse in question? In general, what idea is being developed? <em>What is the flow of thought?”</em></p>

<p>With the larger context now in view, you can narrow your focus and speculate on the meaning of the verse itself. When you come up with something that seems right, sum it up in your own words. Finally—and this step is critical—see if your paraphrase—your summary—makes sense when inserted in place of the verse in the passage.</p>

<p>I call this “the paraphrase principle.”&nbsp;Replace the text in question with your paraphrase and see if the passage still makes sense in light of the larger context. Is it intelligible when inserted back into the paragraph? Does it dovetail naturally with the bigger picture? If it doesn’t, you know you’re on the wrong track.</p>

<p>This technique will immediately weed out interpretations that are obviously erroneous. It’s not a foolproof <em>positive</em> test for accuracy since some faulty interpretations could still be coherent in the context. However, it is a reliable <em>negative</em> test, quickly eliminating alternatives that don’t fit the flow of thought.</p>

<p>If you will begin to do these two things—read the context carefully and apply the paraphrase principle—you will radically improve the accuracy of your interpretations. Remember, meaning always flows from the larger units to the smaller units. Without the bigger picture, you’ll likely be lost.</p>

<p>Don’t forget the rule: Never read a Bible verse. Always read a paragraph at least if you want to be confident you’re getting the right meaning of the verse.</p>

<p>Do I take the Bible literally? I try to I take it at its plain meaning unless I have some good reason to do otherwise. This is the basic rule we apply to everything we read: novels, newspapers, periodicals, and poems. I don’t see why the Bible should be any different.</p>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1">For the record, I think the immorality of homosexuality is one of those universals since, among other reasons, it’s identified in the New Testament as wrong irrespective of the Mosaic Law (e.g., Rom. 1:27). <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:2">The exception to the generalization would be the parables Jesus told His disciples so that they would understand the meaning, but the crowds listening in would not. Mark 4:10 <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:3">C.S. Lewis, <em>The Pilgrim’s Regress</em>, “Afterword to Third Edition,”&nbsp;(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 208. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:4">In more than one instance, Jesus described Hell as “outer darkness”&nbsp;(e.g., Matt. 8:12) and literal flames give light. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
</aside>
</div>

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title: To the Atheist Who Called Jesus “The Magic Carpenter” (And a Warning to Churches)
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 11/01/2013
source:
https://www.str.org/w/to-the-atheist-who-called-jesus-the-magic-carpenter-and-a-warning-to-churches-

content:
            <div> 
		<p>To the atheist commenter who referred to Jesus as “the magic carpenter”&nbsp;while claiming to “understand everything about Christianity”&nbsp;after going to church for 40 years:</p>

<p style="margin-left: 40px;">No, that’s not “what Christianity says Jesus was.”</p>

<p style="margin-left: 40px;">The Christianity of history is about a Trinitarian, sovereign God who created the world with a plan to express both His loving grace and His absolute moral perfection and justice through Jesus’&nbsp;(one of the persons of the Trinity) death on the cross, thereby saving undeserving people from getting what they deserved, and bringing them into the presence of the infinitely good perfection of God—which is no small feat, given that you would be instantly destroyed by the blinding purity and holiness of this infinitely perfect God were you to stand in front of Him on your own, with all of the ways you’ve broken his perfect moral law (hurt others, departed from truth, acted selfishly, rebelled against God as Creator and King, etc., etc.) still infecting you. A perfectly good Judge must punish those who break the law, otherwise He would not be perfect. This is why the cross was such a brilliant move, and it’s why His love and grace have astounded people for millennia.</p>

<p style="margin-left: 40px;">As the one through whom and for whom everything was created, Jesus put some things right while He was here (healing, etc.), giving us a taste of when <em>everything</em> will be put right in the redemption that is to come, and giving us evidence of who He is by demonstrating His authority over this world.</p>

<p style="margin-left: 40px;">These are not “magic tricks.”</p>

<p style="margin-left: 40px;">This Christianity, and <em>this</em> Jesus, created the best thinkers, writers, philosophers, scientists, and artists of the last two thousand years. He inspired books, paintings, sculptures, architecture, and music that still move people to tears to this day—and sometimes to their knees. This Christianity has depth and gravity enough to support men and women giving their entire lives to it (or rather, to <em>Him</em>), sometimes while suffering unimaginable torture.</p>

<p style="margin-left: 40px;">The term “magic carpenter,”&nbsp;on the other hand, is silly, empty, and small, and couldn’t inspire people to make a chalk drawing on the sidewalk. You may think Christianity is false, and that’s&nbsp;fine. But to refer to Jesus as a “magic carpenter”&nbsp;is to say you never understood the Christianity that built Western Civilization. Your church failed you.</p>

<p style="margin-left: 40px;">You can say Christianity is false. You can even say it’s dangerous. The one thing you can’t say is that it’s silly and shallow.</p>

<p style="margin-left: 40px;">If you ever decide to start over, you could start <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Desiring-God-Revised-Edition-Meditations/dp/1601423101/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1382970285&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=desiring+god" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>

<p>To the churches out there who use words in the Bible as jumping off points to teach moralistic “five steps to a more godly you”&nbsp;each week instead of making <em>God</em> the subject of every sermon, preaching what the text says about who <em>He</em> is and how <em>He’s</em> working, placing the passage in the context of the overall story, revealing the Gospel to us, and holding up Jesus for us to worship:</p>

<p style="margin-left: 40px;">Wake up.</p>
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title: Unwitting Revolutionary
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 10/31/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/unwitting-revolutionary
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Martin Luther was a Roman Catholic monk who taught in Wittenburg, Germany in the early 16th century. For years, the guilt of his sin overwhelmed him, and the means the church provided for penance didn’t relieve him of his guilt. Reading the library Bible one day (Bibles weren’t widely available at the time), he came across Romans 1:16-17 and he understood the Gospel as he never had before. “The just shall live by faith.”&nbsp;Reconciliation with God was by grace alone through faith alone.</p>

<p>This sparked Luther to examine a number of practices of the church he thought should be discussed and reformed. He developed a list of 95 points, gave them to his bishop, and nailed them to the church door on October 31, 1517, which was the common way of calling for a community discussion. But the debate wasn’t welcomed by the church and, instead, Luther and others who agreed with him ended up separating from the church.</p>

<p>The Reformation was significant for a number of reasons. Luther translated the Bible into German, and because the printing press was coming into use at the same time, individuals were able to have the Bible and read it themselves for the first time. This affected literacy—many communities taught their children to read so they could read the Bible.</p>

<p>The theology taught by the Reformers placed authority in the Bible not the church, so this elevated the individual. This, in turn, was the worldview that was fertile ground for democracy and human rights. And it eventually was the motivation for Pilgrims to look for a place to practice their religion in peace. The Reformation was significant theologically but also socially.</p>

<p>You can read more about <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/martin-luther-and-the-95-theses" target="_blank">Martin Luther here</a>. And more about the significance of the <a href="http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/the-verses-that-changed-luther/" target="_blank">Reformation here</a>. And I recommend the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309820/" target="_blank">movie <em>Luther</em></a>.</p>
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title: Eye Contact Makes Listeners Less Open-Minded
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/25/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/eye-contact-makes-listeners-less-open-minded
content:
            <div> 
		<p>This is fascinating. From <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2013/10/17/one-thing-not-to-do-if-you-want-to-convince-someone-to-be-pro-life/" target="_blank">Josh Brahm</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/making-eye-contact-can-hurt-your-argument-study-finds/2013/10/05/079b67ec-2d42-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html" target="_blank">reports</a> something I’ve noticed in my dialogues with pro-choice people: “Forcing eye contact when trying to change someone’s mind may actually cause listeners to become more stubborn, a new study shows.”</p>

<p>In a persuasive context, people tend to be on the defensive, like when a speaker is addressing an audience or when two people are debating a political issue. According to <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/09/25/0956797613491968.abstract" target="_blank">the study</a>, being forced to stare into the eyes of another person, as opposed to looking elsewhere, can make that person less open-minded.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>You’re less persuasive when you make eye contact while you’re <em>speaking</em>, but I wonder if the rule against eye contact also applies to when you’re <em>listening</em>. I tend to look away from a person when I talk, but <em>at</em> him when I’m listening, because I instinctively assume I will be more persuasive when my listener is certain I’m hearing his side of things. But perhaps eye contact with him while I’m listening will also make him more defensive. I’ll have to consider this.</p>
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title: Are You Good Enough?
topic: Christian Living
author: Melinda Penner
date: 10/08/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/are-you-good-enough-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I think one of the biggest obstacles to people grasping the meaning of the Gospel is that they misunderstand the message. For various reasons, people think what we’re offering them is a way to be good enough to go to Heaven. It’s the message of every other religion—a system to follow to be moral enough or appease God. It’s what has been preached in a lot of purportedly Christian churches.</p>

<p>So if people think we’re simply offering our preference for how to be good, it’s understandable why they’ll respond by thinking any other path is just as legitimate since they also offer a system or code. It’s understandable that when we insist our system is the only right system that they think we’re narrow-minded.</p>

<p>This is where the Law—the bad news—comes in. It’s why the Good News needs to be accompanied by the bad news. It’s part of what distinguishes Christianity from every other religion. The Law shows us that we are completely incapable of being good enough or appeasing God with our own goodness. We have no goodness. The Law puts to death any hope of being good enough to get to Heaven.</p>

<p>Greg gives an example of how he engages people <a href="http://www.str.org/blog/why-is-jesus-the-only-way-2#.Uk2gFxbtXF8" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>

<p>Once we’ve given up any hope of being good enough, the central message of Christianity then makes sense to people. Christianity isn’t a system, it’s a Person. Jesus was good enough on our behalf and makes us righteous enough to go to Heaven apart from anything we can do. Then our exclusive claim that Jesus is the only way makes more sense. It clarifies that we’re not offering just another way to be good; we’re offering the only Person who can forgive us and make us fit for Heaven.</p>

<p>There are times that we have to work really hard, repeat ourselves, and find different ways of saying the same thing in order to break through the assumptions people have about the Gospel.</p>

<p>I think two simple questions (Columbo-style to elicit information) can be of use sometimes. Years ago I was trained in the Evangelism Explosion method developed by James Kennedy. The two questions are: If you were to die tonight, do you think you would go to Heaven? If you were to explain to God why He should let you into Heaven, what would you say? These questions can help clarify what someone believes about the way to get to Heaven, and helps you address specifically what they believe so you can clarify what the Gospel is so they understand we can’t be good enough.</p>
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title: Darwin’s Doubt Makes Positive Claims
topic: Science
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/darwin-s-doubt-makes-positive-claims
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Stephen Meyer’s response to the charge that <em><a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK378" target="_blank">Darwin’s Doubt</a></em> makes only a negative “God-of-the-gaps”&nbsp;argument (i.e., “We can’t explain it, therefore God did it”) is helpful in concisely explaining why this isn’t the case:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>True, the book does offer several evidentially based (and mathematically rigorous) arguments <em>against</em> the creative power of the mutation/natural selection mechanism...(However, it is probably more accurate to characterize this “absence of knowledge”&nbsp;as knowledge of inadequacy, since it derives from a thorough assessment of causal powers—and limitations—of various materialistic evolutionary mechanisms). In any case, the argument presented in the book is not...a “purely negative”&nbsp;and, therefore, fallacious argument based on the inadequacy of various materialistic evolutionary mechanisms (or gaps in our knowledge).</p>

<p>Instead, the book makes a <em>positive</em> case for intelligent design as an inference to the best explanation for the origin of the genetic (and epigenetic) information necessary to produce the first forms of animal life (as well as other features of the Cambrian animals such as the presence of genetic regulatory networks that function as integrated circuits during animal development). It advances intelligent design as the best explanation not only because many lines of evidence now cast doubt on the creative power of unguided evolutionary mechanisms, but also because of our <em>positive</em>, experience-based knowledge of the powers that intelligent agents have to produce as digital and other forms of information as well as integrated circuitry.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Meyer sums up the argument in his book this way:</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>Premise One:</strong> Despite a thorough search and evaluation, no materialistic causes or evolutionary mechanisms have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified or functional information (or integrated circuitry).</p>

<p><strong>Premise Two:</strong> Intelligent causes have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified/functional information (and integrated circuitry).</p>

<p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> Intelligent design constitutes the best, most causally adequate, explanation for the specified/functional information (and circuitry) that was necessary to produce the Cambrian animals...</p>

<p>Unlike an argument from ignorance, an inference to the best explanation does not assert the adequacy of one causal explanation merely on the basis of the inadequacy of some other causal explanation. Instead, it asserts the superior explanatory power of a proposed cause based upon its established—its known—causal adequacy, and based upon a lack of demonstrated efficacy, despite a thorough search, of any other adequate cause. The inference to design, therefore, depends on present knowledge of the causal powers of various materialistic entities and processes (inadequate) and intelligent agents (adequate).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The rest of the <a href="http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/does_darwins_do078001.html" target="_blank">post</a> is worth a read.</p>
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title: How Can You Increase Your Outreach?
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/16/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/how-can-you-increase-your-outreach-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>You’ve been studying apologetics, but does the truth you learn leap out of you in conversation with others? Learning more and more apologetic answers won’t necessarily lead to real conversations with the people who have the questions. It’s not knowledge of facts that will propel you towards this, it’s something else. From <a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/failure-to-live-on-mission-is-a-worship-problem" target="_blank">Trevin Wax</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Lack of mission is rarely a knowledge problem; it’s a worship problem. We don’t have any trouble talking about the things we love most. Whenever we find something worthy of attention, we talk about it.</p>

<p>The same is true of our relationship with Christ. The more we are in awe of his worthiness, the more likely we are to speak of him to others and serve others in his name.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>How do we cultivate this? John Piper said in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Desiring-God-Revised-Edition-Meditations/dp/1601423101" target="_blank"><em>Desiring God</em></a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The fuel of worship is a true vision of the greatness of God; the fire that makes the fuel burn white hot is the quickening of the Holy Spirit; the furnace made alive and warm by the flame of truth is our renewed spirit; and the resulting heat of our affections is powerful worship, pushing its way out in confessions, longings, acclamations, tears, songs, shouts, bowed heads, lifted hands, and obedient lives.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>And evangelism.</p>

<p>If you’re looking to step outside of apologetics for a bit and seek a “true vision of the greatness of God,”&nbsp;here are some ideas:</p>

<ul>
	<li>The Bible (See <a href="http://www.str.org/articles/you-want-to-be-a-good-apologist#.UlXhxiTB3cE" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scriptorium/2006/08/james-gray-on-mastering-the-bible/" target="_blank">here</a> for suggestions on how to do this)</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Holiness-God-R-C-Sproul/dp/0842339655/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_pap?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1381360010&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+holiness+of+god+sproul" target="_blank">The Holiness of God</a> (His holiness is our cultural blind spot)</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-God-J-I-Packer/dp/083081650X/ref=sr_1_1_title_2_pap?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1381359914&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=knowing+god+packer" target="_blank">Knowing God</a> (A book about who God is)</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Praying-Life-Connecting-Distracting-World/dp/1600063004/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1381359719&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=a+praying+life" target="_blank">A Praying Life</a> (A <a href="http://www.challies.com/book-reviews/a-praying-life" target="_blank">review</a> of its strengths and weaknesses)</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/biographies/by-title" target="_blank">Christian Biographies</a> - lectures by John Piper (See how God has worked in the past - <a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/biographies/peculiar-doctrines-public-morals-and-the-political-welfare" target="_blank">this</a> is my favorite)</li>
</ul>
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title: Are You Closed-Minded?
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Greg Koukl
date: 10/10/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/are-you-closed-minded-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>People who call you closed-minded rather than wrong have a problem with their own view. Greg explains how it unravels.</em></p>

<p>My niece, Kirsten, has a friend named Aiman who accused her of being closed-minded simply because she believed Jesus’&nbsp;claim that He was the only way of salvation. If you have encountered this yourself, you might be interested in what I told her.</p>

<p>Notice that the complaint here is not that Kirsten was wrong about Jesus. Aiman conveniently side-stepped that issue. Instead, she was wrong—“closed-minded”—simply for thinking she was right. Apparently Aiman was not aware that he cannot refute a view by attacking something else—in this case Kirsten’s character.</p>

<p>First, it is completely proper to think that if your view is true, opposing views must be mistaken. How could it be different? For example, if it is true that all religions lead to God, then it is false that only one religion leads to God. It is nonsense to affirm both that there are many ways to God and that there is only one way to God.</p>

<p>I think you can see very quickly that regardless of whoever is correct on the theological point, the other person must be mistaken. Both people must be “narrow”&nbsp;at this juncture. There is no way of escaping it without sounding silly. This is elementary.</p>

<p>In fact, this observation is so basic it would be trivial if it were not that so many people seem to miss it. Ironically, Aiman affirms as much. He thinks himself correct on his pluralism and faults Kirsten for her opposing view. Nothing odd here except, perhaps, that he doesn’t consider himself equally closed-minded for doing the same as she.</p>

<p>This leads to a second point. “Narrow-mindedness”&nbsp;is not a proper criticism of what you believe, but of how you believe it. Here’s what I mean.</p>

<p>“Narrow”&nbsp;is the proper and unavoidable way to describe the content of any belief (as I’ve just pointed out). “Narrow-minded,”&nbsp;however, is entirely different. It refers not to the belief, but to the person who won’t consider opposing views. Instead, he dismisses them without a hearing out of dogmatism, bias, or bigotry.</p>

<p>Christians have certainly been guilty of this in the past, but they have no corner on the market. So-called skeptics are frequently narrow-minded in this regard.</p>

<p>Which brings me to my final point. I don’t mean to be unkind, but it strikes me that Aiman is (ironically) the closed-minded person here. He dismisses Kirsten’s view as narrow—which, of course, it must be if it is a view at all—without engaging her reasons why it might be true. A personal attack (“You’re narrow-minded”) substitutes for engaging the ideas. This is classic closed-mindedness.</p>

<p>The way to demonstrate that people like Aiman are making this error is to simply ask them (Columbo style) if they are open-minded: Yes or no? Are they genuinely open to the possibility that Jesus is who He claimed to be?</p>

<p>If their openness is authentic, they should be willing to consider Jesus’&nbsp;claim and why He made it. Then they would be in a better position to judge the view itself instead of judging the Christian who holds it.</p>

<p>On his present course, though, Aiman could never admit that. If he were truly open-minded to the possibility Jesus was right, he would be perilously close to becoming the kind of person he thinks is closed-minded. Aiman has boxed himself in.</p>

<p>Aiman is not able to escape this self-refuting circle. Based on his definition of openness, he is either not open to even consider Kirsten’s view—making him truly closed-minded—or he would have to admit her “narrow”&nbsp;view might be correct—making him just as closed-minded as he says she is.</p>

<p>As you can see, Aiman’s effort commits suicide, demonstrating that his entire approach is a dead-end. He would be better off abandoning this silly challenge and being open-minded enough to give the Christian view a fair hearing instead of dismissing it.</p>

<p>Barnhouse is alleged to have said that the purpose of an open mind is like the purpose of an open mouth. Eventually it should close down on something solid.</p>

<p>Minds, like mouths, should not be continually gaping open. Sooner or later we have to commit ourselves to some beliefs that seem reasonable. Put another way, we don’t want to have our minds so open that our brains fall out.</p>
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title: How the Early Church Sought to Resolve Textual Variants
topic: History
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/23/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/how-the-early-church-sought-to-resolve-textual-variants
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Dan Wallace of the <a href="http://www.csntm.org/" target="_blank">Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts</a> has an interesting <a href="https://bible.org/article/did-original-new-testament-manuscripts-still-exist-second-century" target="_blank">article</a> offering evidence that the transmission of the New Testament text wasn’t merely linear—that is, it wasn’t like a child’s game of “Telephone”&nbsp;(or “Chinese Whispers,”&nbsp;for our European friends), where one person tells the next person, and he tells the next, and so on.</p>

<p>Instead, imagine a game of Telephone where the third, fourth, and fifth people in line can go back to the first and second and check the message they received against the original before they pass it on. Then imagine the first person doesn’t just tell one person, but multiple others who also check their copies against earlier copies (likewise with the second person, third person, etc.), and add to that the fact that the goal is to get an exact copy (not to end up with a funny joke), and you have a better picture of the situation.</p>

<p>Wallace explains how statements by Tertullian reveal the early church’s concern with textual purity and their practice of resolving variants by referring back to copies as close as possible to the apostolic originals, and possibly to the originals themselves:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>There are two or three places that address whether the originals survived into the second century. Tertullian, writing in c. 180 CE, said, “Come now, you who would indulge a better curiosity, if you would apply it to the business of your salvation, run over [to] the apostolic churches, in which the very thrones of the apostles are still pre-eminent in their places, in which their own authentic writings are read, uttering the voice and representing the face of each of them severally”...</p>

<p>Tertullian goes on to discuss each of these ’authentic writings’&nbsp;as being found in the very churches to which they were written. He mentions Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, Ephesus, and Rome. He urges his reader to visit these sites to check out these authentic writings. This seems to suggest that he believed that these documents were the autographs. In the least, it suggests that by his day carefully done copies of the originals were considered important for verifying what the apostles meant, and such copies had a strong connection to the churches to which they were originally written...</p>

<p>Tertullian’s statement tells us that some early Christians were concerned about having accurate copies and that the earliest ones still in existence were not quietly put on the shelf...</p>

<p>An important ramification of all this is as follows: By the middle of the second century, when canon conscientiousness was on the rise, the Christian community regarded the autographs, or at least the earliest copies of the New Testament documents, as important witnesses. They were concerned about the purity of the text with regard to select textual variants. Most likely, this implies that the copying of the manuscripts in the early decades of the Christian faith was <em>not</em> that of strictly linear descent (one copy of another copy of another copy). Rather, there would be times when at least a few scribes would want to check <em>behind</em> their exemplar and look at its exemplar. This would especially occur whenever a disputed reading cropped up. So, there seems to have been a bit of a check on the quality of the transmission of the text from very early on.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read the rest of the article “<a href="https://bible.org/article/did-original-new-testament-manuscripts-still-exist-second-century" target="_blank">Did the Original New Testament Manuscripts Still Exist in the Second Century?</a>”</p>

<p>(HT: <a href="http://www.thepoachedegg.net/the-poached-egg/2012/03/did-the-original-new-testament-manuscripts-still-exist-in-the-second-century.html" target="_blank">The Poached Egg</a>)</p>
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title: We Need Confidence to Endure
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/30/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/we-need-confidence-to-endure
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I <a href="https://www.str.org/blog/do-not-throw-away-your-confidence#.XAi2eJNKijQ" target="_blank">posted</a> earlier this week about the call in Hebrews 10:32-36 to hold fast to our confidence in the reality of Christ and His sacrifice for the sake of endurance. Unfortunately, the reputation of confidence has suffered in this postmodern world, where “humility”&nbsp;has come to mean doubting your convictions. As G.K. Chesterton <a href="http://gkcdaily.blogspot.com/2012/11/humility-in-wrong-place.html" target="_blank">noted</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed... The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether... We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Because a person’s confidence in the rightness of his convictions enables him to endure in his course of action, even at great cost to himself, there is much discussion these days about the dangers of this sort of confidence. Those who think their beliefs are true are feared and even hated. Evils of all sorts have been traced back to confidence, and confidence is declared its root and source. The remedy for evil in this view, then, is for everyone to reduce their confidence in their beliefs. It’s commonly thought that this would make the world a better place.</p>

<h2>Confidence Can Serve Either Good or Evil</h2>

<p>But confidence itself is a morally neutral trait. What matters is what you’re putting your confidence <em>in</em>. If your confidence is well placed in the true and the good, then great good will follow from the endurance it produces. But if your confidence is wrongly placed in false and evil ideas, then great evil will follow. The problem, therefore, is the false beliefs, not the confidence which can serve either good or evil. The remedy for evil in this view is for everyone to address the actual beliefs people hold, endeavoring to reduce confidence in false beliefs and raise confidence in true ones. The greater confidence people have in good, true beliefs, the better off this world will be.</p>

<p>If this second view is correct, then seeing confidence as the root of evil and pressuring everyone to have less confidence will have the unfortunate effect of causing a net loss of not only bad things in this world, but also a great deal of good. To do good is a very, very difficult enterprise—one that is often met with ridicule and intense opposition (just look at Jesus). <em>Confidence is an absolute necessity for anyone who would persevere through this.</em></p>

<h2>The Blessings of Confidence</h2>

<p><a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2012/08/happy-birthday-wilberforce.html" target="_blank">William Wilberforce</a> is a perfect example of the blessings of confidence. How was he able to fight for <em>twenty years</em>, enduring scorn and personal attacks day in and day out, to put an end to the slave trade in England? Listen to <a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Biographies/1492_Peculiar_Doctrines_Public_Morals_and_the_Political_Welfare/" target="_blank">his own explanation</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The grand object of my parliamentary existence [is the abolition of the slave trade]...Before this great cause all others dwindle in my eyes, and I must say that the <em>certainty</em> that I am right <em>here</em>, adds greatly to the complacency [i.e., the settled, peaceful confidence] with which I exert myself in asserting it. If it please God to honor me so far, may I be the instrument of stopping such a course of wickedness and cruelty as never before disgraced a Christian country.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Wilberforce was <em>certain</em> that he was right about what was wicked and cruel, and he was <em>certain</em> that the right thing for him to do was to stop that wickedness. That is what drove him steadily on to end the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people. Would you have chided him for his confidence? If so, what if he had listened to you? What if all the abolitionists had listened to you? The world would now be a much uglier place.</p>

<p>Let’s work to end evil, not confidence.</p>
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title: Why We Shouldn’t Abort Babies That Are Going to Die
topic: Bioethics
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/18/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/why-we-shouldn-t-abort-babies-that-are-going-to-die
content:
            <div> 
		<p>In an article titled “<a href="http://www.lifesitenews.com/blog/twenty-reasons-to-think-twice-about-aborting-a-baby-with-anencephaly" target="_blank">Twenty reasons to think twice about aborting a baby with anencephaly</a>,”&nbsp;Peter Saunders tells the story of how his thinking was jarred out of the usual view of this common practice:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Before I qualified as a doctor I probably would have taken the generally expressed view [of support for aborting a child with a fatal abnormality], but an experience I had as a junior doctor dramatically changed my attitudes both to disability and abortion...</p>

<p>The administrative clerk on the medical ward where I was working was heavily pregnant and I asked her when she was due. She gave me the date and before I could say anything else said, ’my baby has anencephaly’. While I was inwardly asking why she had not had an abortion, she added, ’I could not bring myself to end the life of my own baby.’</p>

<p>The baby was born a few weeks later and survived about a week. She held it, nursed and cared for it and said her goodbyes before its inevitable death.</p>

<p>Up until that point I had not contemplated that such an approach was even possible. She not only demonstrated that it was but taught me a huge lesson about courage, compassion and how to face and handle tragedy, grief and bereavement. I have never forgotten it and resolved then, that if I was ever in the same situation I would want to do the same.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Saunders offers twenty concise and compelling reasons why we should not end the lives of children with anencephaly. For example:</p>

<blockquote>
<h2>A baby with anencephaly is a dependent relative</h2>

<p>Babies with anencephaly are profoundly dependent but are also biologically related to their parents and carry their genes. They are therefore dependent relatives and so should I believe be treated with the same love and respect as any other dependent and dying close relative.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Here are all twenty reasons (please see the <a href="http://www.lifesitenews.com/blog/twenty-reasons-to-think-twice-about-aborting-a-baby-with-anencephaly" target="_blank">article</a> for a brief explanation of each):</p>

<ol>
	<li>A baby with anencephaly is a human being</li>
	<li>A baby with anencephaly is not brain dead</li>
	<li>A baby with anencephaly is a dependent relative</li>
	<li>A baby with anencephaly is a disabled person</li>
	<li>Palliative care is the best response to terminal illness</li>
	<li>We should not be making judgments about the worth of other people</li>
	<li>Abortion for anencephaly is discriminatory</li>
	<li>Abortion for anencephaly is often a coercive offer</li>
	<li>Abortion for anencephaly is contrary to every historic ethical code</li>
	<li>Abortion for anencephaly exchanges one problem for a whole set of different problems</li>
	<li>Saying goodbye properly is important for resolving grief and achieving closure</li>
	<li>Abortion for anencephaly can be profoundly damaging to a mother’s mental health</li>
	<li>Pregnancy is the most intimate form of hospitality</li>
	<li>There are real dangers of incremental extension once we embark down this route</li>
	<li>Deformity does not define us</li>
	<li>Easing our own pain is not sufficient reason for ending another person’s life</li>
	<li>Anencephaly forces us to acknowledge and face our deepest prejudices</li>
	<li>Major life decisions should not be made at a time of crisis</li>
	<li>We should not allow ourselves to be manipulated by the media or those with an agenda</li>
	<li>Death is not the end</li>
</ol>

<p>Most of these reasons to not abort don’t just apply to babies with fatal abnormalities, they also apply to any baby with a disability. If you’re terrified by the knowledge that your baby is going to be born with a disability, I urge you to read carefully through the explanations of each of these reasons given in the <a href="http://www.lifesitenews.com/blog/twenty-reasons-to-think-twice-about-aborting-a-baby-with-anencephaly" target="_blank">article</a>.</p>

<p>And consider, also, who God is, who we are, and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter%202:9-10&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">why we’re here</a>. There are many sufferings we endure in this life, but God does not permit even one instance of suffering for which He doesn’t have <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2011/07/how-our-suffering-glorifies-god.html" target="_blank">a purpose</a>. Just as Jesus revealed God’s glory and grace to us through His suffering, so our own suffering can reveal God’s greatness and grace to us and to others. And that, after all, is what we are here on this earth to do.</p>

<p>If you’re not sure how God could be glorified through your having a child with disabilities, read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wrestling-Angel-Story-Disability-Lessons/dp/1453818774" target="_blank">Wrestling with an Angel: A Story of Love, Disability and the Lessons of Grace</a> by Greg Lucas. And if you need some encouragement, try these lectures from Desiring God’s recent conference, “<a href="https://www.desiringgod.org/series/gods-good-design-in-disability" target="_blank">The Works of God: God’s Good Design in Disability</a>.”</p>

<p>Let our view of human beings, disabilities, and suffering not be the same as the world’s.</p>

<p>(HT: <a href="https://twitter.com/JoshBrahm/status/390538492725702657" target="_blank">@JoshBrahm</a>)</p>
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title: Do Not Throw Away Your Confidence
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/28/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/do-not-throw-away-your-confidence
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Hebrews 10:32-36 has a very relevant exhortation for our postmodern times:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened [“after receiving the knowledge of the truth”&nbsp;(v. 26)], you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one. <em>Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.</em> For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This confidence in the supremacy of the person of Christ and His reconciling sacrifice for our sins in objective history (the focus of the beginning of <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hebrews+10&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Chapter 10</a>)—the kind of confidence and “knowing”&nbsp;that brings the reward of endurance through reproaches and tribulations...can this thrive in a person who thinks religious beliefs are merely subjective preferences?</p>
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title: Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air
topic: Philosophy
author: Greg Koukl
date: 10/17/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/relativism-feet-firmly-planted-in-mid-air
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>It might be that, given the nature of the world, all we are left with when it comes to ethics are human conventions. But if that’s the case, then an intellectually honest relativist will have to admit that, given his view of the world, ultimately, anything goes.</em></p>

<p>Recently I’ve run into a challenge to my own challenge of moral relativism (Relativism—Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air, Baker). The rejoinder is clever, but misleading. I want to give you my response so you will be ready if you encounter the same objection.</p>

<p>First a quick review.</p>

<p>Moral relativism is the view that ideas of right and wrong are more like ice cream than insulin. Saying certain conduct is wrong is like saying vanilla tastes bad. The statement only tells you what individual people like. It says nothing about the action itself. There can be as many moral “truths,”&nbsp;then, as there are people who believe them.</p>

<p>Consequently, moral relativism is a kind of subjectivism. When it comes to moral rules—principles of right and wrong—it’s up to the subject, the individual, to decide because there are no true, universal, ethical obligations or moral principles that apply equally to all people.</p>

<p>Note, by the way, that the “subject”&nbsp;can be an individual person or an individual culture. Most relativism today is the latter sort. Right and wrong are socially constructed by the group. However, since no universal standard exists to govern all groups, each decides right and wrong only for itself without judging those that hold other values.</p>

<p>Even with this brief description, I think you can see a problem beginning to emerge. A relativist is not going to be able to get any traction if he wants to condemn (in any ultimate sense) any behavior, regardless how evil it seems to be. In the final analysis, as with ice cream, one action is just as “good”&nbsp;as the other. There is no ultimate right or wrong, evil or good, virtue or vice. Anything goes.</p>

<p>Since this is the relativist’s fatal weakness, I’m not surprised when I get pushback on this point. “No relativist believes that anything goes,“&nbsp;I’ve been told. “You’re twisting our view. Every culture has its own framework of right and wrong. Even if there are no universal standards of morality, that doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all within a given group.”</p>

<p>Fair enough. Let me answer this charge with a simple illustration.</p>

<p>Let us pretend that you want to play the classic board game, Monopoly. Like every other game, Monopoly has rules. There are standards, a framework of right or wrong of sorts that works within the Monopoly “community.”&nbsp;According to the rules of the game, for example, you cannot have houses and hotels on the same piece of property. That would be wrong. Parker Brothers, the inventors of the game, said so.</p>

<p>Relativism is like Monopoly. In one sense, it’s not the case that “anything goes.”&nbsp;Rather, standards set by the community (Parker Brothers, in this case) govern behavior.</p>

<p>These laws are “true,”&nbsp;though, in an entirely different way than, say, the laws of gravity are true. They are not true because of the way the world is structured, but because of the way human beings (subjects) have arranged the game. If you don’t like the rules, you can change them (variations that are sometimes called “house rules”), or play a different game, or play no game at all. It’s completely up to you.</p>

<p>You can’t do that with gravity. If you don’t like the laws of physics, too bad. Adapt or die. Reality will punish you if you don’t take it seriously.</p>

<p>Yes, even in relativistic systems you can get punished by the group if you break the rules and get caught. But I think you can see this is a contrived sort of “punishment”&nbsp;based merely on human conventions (“Go directly to Jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.”), not on transcendent standards.</p>

<p>In the end, as I said, anything goes. That’s always the case with relativism.</p>

<p>If you are a moral realist (objectivist), you think moral rules are real things, not individual whims or social conventions created by culture. They are like gravity, not Monopoly. If you are a relativist, you are playing Monopoly with right and wrong.</p>

<p>Of course, this would not make relativism false. It might be that, given the nature of the world, all we are left with when it comes to ethics are human conventions. But if that’s the case, then an intellectually honest relativist will have to admit that, given his view of the world, ultimately, anything goes.</p>
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title: Unified Truth: Faith and Reason
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 10/24/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/unified-truth-faith-and-reason
content:
            <div> 
		<p>You’ve probably heard of Thomas Aquinas because he was so influential, but you may not know why. He’s known as the “Doctor of the Church”&nbsp;because he’s one of the most influential theologians and philosophers, and he had considerable influence on western thought.</p>

<p>Here’s <a href="http://blog.logos.com/2012/04/why-thomas-aquinas-is-important/" target="_blank">a brief summary</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Thomas Aquinas was a profoundly influential thinker from the thirteenth century. As a scholastic, Aquinas sought to understand Christian theology in light of the rediscovery of Aristotle’s works, and he redefined the relationship between revelation and reason, science and theology, and faith and philosophy for the next eight centuries. As a philosopher, Aquinas developed principles of just war and natural law, and outlined an argument for God’s existence from contingency—the intellectual forerunner to the modern Argument from Design.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Here’s <a href="http://www.dartmouthapologia.org/apologia/natural-truths-in-scripture/" target="_blank">more on Aquinas’&nbsp;thinking</a> on the complementary nature of faith and reason:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Christianity’s engagement with non-Christian thought proceeds from the Christian belief that reason and faith are complementary, not oppositional. Thomas Aquinas’&nbsp;synthesis of Aristotle and Christianity is a vital chapter in this engagement. His interaction with the philosophy of Aristotle demonstrates both the harmony of reason and faith and the oneness of truth, which are both central to the Christian intellectual tradition...</p>

<p>Aquinas felt comfortable undertaking such incorporation because, as he said, “All truth is one.”&nbsp;He argued that what we learn from the natural world through science and philosophy, provided it is unquestionably true, can never contradict that which we learn from revelation, that is, directly from God. He compared Scripture and reason to two books, “the book of revelation”&nbsp;and “the book of nature,”&nbsp;which were both “written”&nbsp;by God and consequently compatible. Therefore, though Aquinas was well educated in the Bible and the writings of earlier theologians, he preferred to base his arguments in logic and philosophical reasoning that could appeal even to nonbelievers. He did so confident in his faith that reason and philosophy would confirm and not contradict the revelation of God.</p>
</blockquote>
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title: Your Work Is Important
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/21/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/your-work-is-important
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Joseph Scheumann has a post on “<a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/five-encouragements-for-everyday-work" target="_blank">Five Encouragements for Everyday Work</a>”&nbsp;discussing the value and purpose of our work. You’re not a second-class citizen in God’s eyes if you’re not in the ministry. No matter what you do for a living (assuming it’s legal and moral), your work is important. We’re all creating value for our societies, our families, and ourselves; and God is working through even the most obscure job to serve people.</p>

<p>Scheumann quotes Gene Veith:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The ability to read God’s word is an inexpressibly precious blessing, but reading is an ability that did not spring fully formed in our young minds, it required the <em>vocation</em> of teachers. God protects us through the cop on the beat and the whole panoply of the legal system. He gives us beauty and meaning through artists. He lets us travel through the ministry of auto workers, mechanics, road crews, and airline employees. He keeps us clean through the work of garbage collectors, plumbers, sanitation workers, and sometimes undocumented aliens who clean our hotel rooms. He brings people to salvation through pastors and through anyone else who proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost. The fast-food worker, the inverter; the clerical assistant, the scientist; the accountant, the musician—they all have high callings, used by God to bless and serve His people and His creation. (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Work-Redesign-Christian-Vocation/dp/1433524473/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1378918648&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=God+at+Work%3A+Your+Christian+Vocation+in+All+of+Life" target="_blank"><em>God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life</em></a>, 14-15)</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I’m always reminded of the beauty and dignity of work when I catch an episode of Undercover Boss. It doesn’t matter how low on the pay scale or how seemingly mundane the job is, when I see a man joyfully do his work with excellence, out of a desire to create something that will serve the customers to the best of his ability, there is a certain glory and awe that surrounds this, and I want to be just like him.</p>
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title: Christian Power
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/05/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/christian-power
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Justin Taylor posted an interesting and beautiful <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2013/09/30/an-interview-with-andy-crouch-about-the-idol-and-gift-of-power/" target="_blank">interview</a> with Andy Crouch, author of <em>Playing God, Redeeming the Gift of Power</em>, wherein Crouch discusses the nature of Christian power:</p>

<blockquote>
<p><a class="asset-img-link" href="http://str.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d2ba69e2019affc667c6970c-pi"><img alt="Banjo-Lesson-560x789" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451d2ba69e2019affc667c6970c" height="294" src="http://str.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d2ba69e2019affc667c6970c-320wi" title="Banjo-Lesson-560x789" width="208"></a>[Henry Ossawa] Tanner’s painting [“<a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/files/2013/09/Banjo-Lesson.jpg" target="_blank">The Banjo Lesson</a>,”&nbsp;1893] is an amazing portrait of true power, in the context of a music lesson... Tanner was not only the first African-American painter of international renown but arguably the last American painter of that stature to be a serious and devout Christian.</p>

<p>What really got me thinking about Tanner’s painting is the two levels on which it operates. At one level, it is simply a portrait of the exchange of power that happens in all musical instruction (and instruction more generally), where the student acquires power <em>without the teacher giving up any of their own power.</em> Teaching is a paradigmatic example of how power can multiply and lead to flourishing without anyone being diminished or dominated. The teacher has real, asymmetrical power, capacity, and authority—something we too easily automatically associate with domination—but that authority is all devoted to the flourishing of the student. And yet the teacher also flourishes in that relationship, precisely by exercising power. Tanner captures the intimacy, trust, love, and patience involved in the true use of power for flourishing—and by including a jug and loaf on the golden-lit table in the background, suggests that what is happening here is not just mundane culture but a foretaste of glory.</p>

<p>At another level, Tanner was operating within a profoundly broken system of power... By painting a banjo lesson, Tanner was taking this visual symbol of the exploitation of his own culture and rescuing it from caricature and diminishment. He infuses this humble musical instrument and art form with all the artistry of the salons of Paris and all the dignity of “classical”&nbsp;instruments (like, say, the cello). I see this painting as a kind of restoration of image-bearing possibility—it restored dignity, agency, and beauty to a culture and a people who had been robbed of them...</p>

<p>[Tanner] was not a genre painter. But when he turned to this subject, he brought all his skill and power to restoring others’&nbsp;image-bearing capacity. That is true power.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Christianity changed the West’s understanding of power. Our culture is saturated with its ideas today, so it’s easy to forget how radical this was:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Christ Jesus,...although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted him (Philippians 2:5-9).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Jesus, who had ultimate power, humbled Himself to the point of death for the sake of others. This is the life He called us to when He said:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many (Matthew 20:25-28).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Certainly there have been those in the West who have abused power, but when you look at what is <em>admired</em> in this culture, you’ll find that it’s this vision of Jesus as the self-sacrificing servant that is held in high regard. We take this for granted, but it has never been a universally-held ideal. “The word of the cross is <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+cor+1%3A18-25&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">foolishness</a>”&nbsp;to those who haven’t been shaped by the Christian story.</p>

<p>Nietzsche is one example of someone who <a href="http://issuesetc.org/tag/friedrich-nietzsche/" target="_blank">explicitly rejected</a> the Christian view of power in favor of a “zero-sum conception of power as domination,”&nbsp;as Crouch mentions in the <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2013/09/30/an-interview-with-andy-crouch-about-the-idol-and-gift-of-power/" target="_blank">interview</a>. But even those who aren’t atheists have difficulties with the cross. Muslims, for example, reject the idea that Jesus died on the cross for the very reason that their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_view_of_Jesus%27_death" target="_blank">concept</a> of God’s power doesn’t allow for a prophet to suffer this kind of humiliation. They find our vision of a divine Jesus on the cross <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNIJblJT66A#t=50m37s" target="_blank">incomprehensible</a>.</p>

<p>Ideas shape individuals and cultures, <a href="http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2013/09/discipled-by-narnia.html" target="_blank">teaching them what they should love</a> and pursue. May you become as <a href="http://www.str.org/articles/you-want-to-be-a-good-apologist#.Uk73uSTB3cE" target="_blank">steeped</a> in the Christian story as Henry Ossawa Tanner was so that everything coming out of you takes on the shape of truth, beauty, and human dignity.</p>

<p>Read the rest of the <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2013/09/30/an-interview-with-andy-crouch-about-the-idol-and-gift-of-power/" target="_blank">interview</a>.</p>
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title: Based on Eyewitness Accounts
topic: History
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/03/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/based-on-eyewitness-accounts
content:
            <div> 
		<p>This is a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5Ylt1pBMm8" target="_blank">lecture</a> by Dr. Peter J. Williams titled “New Evidences the Gospels Were Based on Eyewitness Accounts.”&nbsp;(There’s also some good evidence for why the non-canonical gospels were <em>not</em>.) Dr. Williams has an engaging style, and the information is fascinating, so it’s well worth your time. The lecture was given a couple of years ago, so the evidences are not as new today, but I’ve found that the information is still not as widely known as it should be.</p>

<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9" data-embed-id="r5Ylt1pBMm8" data-styles="{&quot;width&quot;:&quot;100%&quot;}" style="width:100%"><iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" class="embed-responsive-item" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r5Ylt1pBMm8?rel=0" tabindex="0"></iframe></div>

<p>You can view the Q&amp;A portion of the lecture <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u04d6M3tAw" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
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title: The Equal Rights Argument
topic: Bioethics
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/10/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-equal-rights-argument
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to join <a href="http://righttolifeca.org/" target="_blank">Right to Life of Central California</a> at a recent Fresno City College training and outreach. The volunteers were trained in part by our former speaker, Steve Wagner of <a href="http://jfaweb.org/HOME.html" target="_blank">Justice for All</a>, and they were experts at creating congenial conversations about abortion with the students passing by their exhibit (see a snapshot below from the free speech board they put up for people to post their opinions).</p>

<p>Josh Brahm, the Education Director for RLCC, <a href="http://joshbrahm.com/undervalued-argument-prolife-movement/" target="_blank">describes</a> the approach his organization has been teaching volunteers to focus on:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>We’re asking pro-choice people if they agree that <strong>all human adults have an equal right to life.</strong></p>

<p>When they say yes, we ask them, “<strong>Doesn’t that mean there must be something the same about us?”</strong></p>

<p>In other words, if we all have an <em>equal</em> right to life, then we must all have something in common that demands that we treat each other equally, <em>and we must have that property equally.</em> It can’t be something (like size or intelligence) that comes in degrees, or it wouldn’t explain our equal right to life.</p>

<p>When the pro-choice person agrees with that conclusion, <strong>we simply ask them what is the same about us</strong>...</p>

<p>We wait patiently, and if they give an answer, we engage it. But if they have no idea, we then ask if they would like to hear our answer. Nearly everybody says yes.</p>

<p>Our answer is that we all have <em>humanness</em> in common. That’s something that doesn’t come in degrees. It’s an all-or-nothing kind of thing.</p>

<p>And if being human is what gives us intrinsic value, then that explains a lot of data. It explains why all the adult humans have an equal right to life, even though we have so many differences. It also explains why things like racism and sexism are wrong. Those things focus on a surface difference that doesn’t morally matter, and ignores the thing we have in common, which IS what morally matters!</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Josh says they’ve been having a lot of success changing people’s minds with this argument, which is surprising yet intriguing to me—surprising because I wouldn’t expect the more philosophical and less concrete idea of “humanness”&nbsp;to be compelling to the average person; intriguing because it really did seem to resonate with the “person on the street,”&nbsp;from what I saw.</p>

<p>This argument depends on our having an intuition of intrinsic human value and equal rights, but I’m not convinced this is an intuition. I suspect it’s actually <a href="/w/intrinsic-human-value-has-to-be-taught" target="_blank">cultural capital</a> from the biblical worldview, and as that fades and people reject the idea of intrinsic human value, this argument may become less and less effective. (For this reason, I think you would have less luck with a philosophy student steeped in another worldview than you would with the average person who has absorbed, though perhaps not consciously evaluated and accepted, a more traditional, Christian view of the human person.) But for now, if people are finding it compelling, let’s use it while we can.</p>

<p><a class="asset-img-link" href="http://str.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d2ba69e2019affc6f56e970c-pi"><img alt="JFA-FLCC Free Speech board" border="0" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451d2ba69e2019affc6f56e970c image-full" src="http://str.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d2ba69e2019affc6f56e970c-800wi" title="JFA-FLCC Free Speech board"></a></p>
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title: What Was the Purpose of the Command against Mixed Threads?
topic: Theology
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/09/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-was-the-purpose-of-the-command-against-mixed-threads-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Adam Parker of Bring the Books has <a href="http://www.bringthebooks.org/2013/09/why-did-god-forbid-blending-threads.html" target="_blank">an interesting take</a> on why the Israelites were commanded not to use mixed threads in their clothing:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>This view says that the passage is not prohibiting mixed threads because it was the clothing of prostitutes. Nor is this prohibition merely meant to be a picture of holiness and Israel’s distinction from among the nations. Rather, this prohibition had a very practical purpose. <a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Numbers%2016.1-40" target="_blank">Numbers 16:1-40</a> records an incident when the laity sought to take priestly duties for themselves. In this view <a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Deut.%2022.11" target="_blank">Deut. 22:11</a> (and <a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Lev.%2019.19" target="_blank">Lev. 19:19</a>) actually address a real and pressing issue: namely the temptation for the laity to resent or break down the distinction between priests and laity among the Israelites. Given this understanding of the prohibition of mixed threads, we see that God is placing barriers between the people and the Levites to keep such events as the rebellion of Korah from taking place. It is also easy to explain to the skeptic why Christians no longer observe this prohibition. Since the New Testament no longer distinguishes elders from the laity by clothing this command regarding mixed threads is no longer relevant except perhaps in terms of a persistent recognition that the Church still has leaders and elders whom the members are to submit to (<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Hebrews%2013.17" target="_blank">Hebrews 13:17</a>).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>So rather than the command being about a separation between the Israelites and other nations, Parker says it’s about making a distinction between the priests and the laity. This sounds reasonable, especially since there was a similar <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2030:34-38&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">prohibition</a> against the laity using the particular blend of incense that was only to be used in the tabernacle (later, the temple) by the priests:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Then the Lord said to Moses, “Take for yourself spices, stacte and onycha and galbanum, spices with pure frankincense; there shall be an equal part of each. With it you shall make incense, a perfume, the work of a perfumer, salted, pure, <em>and</em> holy. You shall beat some of it very fine, and put part of it before the testimony in the tent of meeting where I will meet with you; it shall be most holy to you. The incense which you shall make, you shall not make in the same proportions for yourselves; it shall be holy to you for the Lord. Whoever shall make <em>any</em> like it, to use as perfume, shall be cut off from his people”&nbsp;(Exodus 30:34-38).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>But I don’t think this prohibition against mixed fibers for the laity need be merely a practical command meant to maintain the proper, ordained authority structure (and I think Parker might agree with me on this). When creating the Israelite culture through the Law, God used many visual parables to illustrate the setting apart of the holy from the profane. Those who were ordained to stand before God for the sake of the people were set apart in a special way <em>because God is holy, great, and beautiful</em>. All the commands for the specific clothing, the decorations, and the objects in the tabernacle were meant to express this truth about God.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>You shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother [the priest], for glory and for beauty (Exodus 28:2).</p>

<p>You shall also consecrate [the items in the tabernacle], that they may be most holy; whatever touches them shall be holy (Exodus 30:29).</p>

<p>[Those not ordained to do so] shall not go in to see the holy objects even for a moment, or they will die (Numbers 4:20).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The separation between man and a holy God wasn’t just <em>explained</em> to the Israelites, it was experienced and seen as they lived out the commands of the Law every day. God spent more than a thousand years preparing us for Christ in this way. Try to read <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews%207-10&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">Hebrews 7-10</a> with the eyes of those who lived the holiness code in the Law—those who were always at a distance from God because of their sin, those who were required to participate in the <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews%2010:1-18&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">endless</a> cleansing rituals reminding them of this distance—and you will be awestruck at what it means to be united to Christ, our priest, who has truly and finally made us holy, tearing down the curtain separating us from the most holy place where God dwells.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split (Matthew 27:50-51).</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Parker goes on to explain why he finds this view of the mixed fiber commandment compelling:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>a) It has ancient pedigree...</p>

<p>b) It accounts for the previous command for the priests to wear mixed threads...</p>

<p>c) It allows for harmonization within the Pentateuch rather than disharmony.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>You can read his full post <a href="http://www.bringthebooks.org/2013/09/why-did-god-forbid-blending-threads.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
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title: The Power of a Two-Letter Word
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Greg Koukl
date: 10/24/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-power-of-a-two-letter-word
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Ridicule is not an argument. Here’s a more effective two-letter strategy.</em></p>

<p>I would like to tip you off to the power of a simple, two-letter word.</p>

<p>When used properly, it has the ability to stop an aggressive challenger in his tracks, turn the tables, and get him thinking. This modest word is a little giant, putting the ball back into his court and putting you in the driver’s seat of an otherwise out-of-control conversation.</p>

<p>That word, used as a question, is “So?”&nbsp;Here is why—and how—it works.</p>

<p>Many challenges to your convictions as a follower of Christ amount to nothing more than “trash talk,”&nbsp;cleverly worded insults meant to intimidate, denigrate, disparage, and subdue. They have great rhetorical power and initially sound completely persuasive.</p>

<p>The problem is, trash talk is just that—trash, a garbage attack that has no bearing on the issue at hand. You need a reply that will immediately show it for the nonsense it is.</p>

<p>Often, your best response to trash talk is to simply agree with the put-down and then use that powerful, two-letter word. “So?”&nbsp;In other words, even if the charge were true, what follows from it?</p>

<p>Here’s one example: “Christians are stupid.”&nbsp;The afternoon before I lectured to a crowd of 400 students at UC San Diego, I learned that many of the young people on campus thought Christians were stupid. That information gave me a good opening for my talk.</p>

<p>“I understand that many of you think Christians are stupid. Well,”&nbsp;I admitted, “many of them are. So? Many non-Christians are stupid too, so I don’t know what that gets you. Tonight I’m here to explain why Christianity is not stupid.”</p>

<p>Do you see how the air goes out of the Christians-are-stupid dig once it’s exposed as trash talk? Religious people of all stripes can be gullible, irrational, easily misled, and emotionally manipulated. So what? They are no different from the rest of the population. A critic is going to have to come up with something more substantial to discredit Christianity.</p>

<p>Here’s another: “Christians are hypocrites.”&nbsp;I always have this simple response ready for that barb: “Yep, many are. So?”&nbsp;Some Christians may be hypocrites—fakers. Church-goers can be self-centered, judgmental, gossipy louts. It’s tragic, but what does that tell you about God, Jesus, or Christianity? Nothing.</p>

<p>And then there’s the classic: “God is a crutch.”&nbsp;With that charge I wholeheartedly agree. God is a crutch. So? Crippled people need crutches. For multitudes, God has been an “ever present help in time of trouble.”&nbsp;What’s the problem? How is that evidence against God?</p>

<p>Let me give you a tip. Whenever someone faults an idea by attacking something about the person who holds the idea rather than giving evidence against the idea itself, you know he’s talking trash. Ridicule is not an argument. Making disparaging observations about someone’s psychology is not evidence. Finding vices with religious people tells you nothing about God or religion.</p>

<p>Here’s why this is a losing strategy if you care about truth: You cannot refute a view by attacking something else. These rhetorical tricks may be compelling to the untutored who can’t see through them, but they’re nothing more than trash. And the simple word “So?”&nbsp;shows it to be so.</p>
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title: Never Read a Press Release Headline
topic: Christian Living
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 10/14/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/never-read-a-press-release-headline
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Find a Bible verse you don’t understand, <a href="http://www.str.org/articles/never-read-a-bible-verse#.UlWuDSTB3cE" target="_blank">read it in its surrounding context</a>. Find a surprising headline, always be sure to do the same.</p>

<p>I just came across this: “<a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm" target="_blank">Ancient Confession Found: ’We Invented Jesus Christ</a>.’”&nbsp;Well, that is news, indeed! The first paragraph gives more information:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>American Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill will be appearing before the British public for the first time in London on the 19th of October to present a controversial new discovery: ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to Atwill, that the New Testament was written by first-century Roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the entire story of Jesus Christ.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Wow! So why did they do it?</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Atwill asserts that Christianity did not really begin as a religion, but a sophisticated government project, a kind of propaganda exercise used to pacify the subjects of the Roman Empire. “Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century,”&nbsp;he explains. “When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system. That’s when the ’peaceful’&nbsp;Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to ’give onto Caesar’&nbsp;and pay their taxes to Rome.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>And the evidence for this?</p>

<blockquote>
<p>What seems to have eluded many scholars is that the sequence of events and locations of Jesus [<em>sic</em>] ministry are more or less the same as the sequence of events and locations of the military campaign of [Emperor] Titus Flavius as described by Josephus. This is clear evidence of a deliberately constructed pattern. The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>So...when are we going to get to the part about the confession?</p>

<blockquote>
<p>How could this go unnoticed in the most scrutinized books of all time? “Many of the parallels are conceptual or poetic, so they aren’t all immediately obvious. After all, the authors did not want the average believer to see what they were doing, but they did want the alert reader to see it. An educated Roman in the ruling class would probably have recognized the literary game being played.”&nbsp;Atwill maintains he can demonstrate that “<em>the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is ’We invented Jesus Christ, and we’re proud of it’”</em>&nbsp;[emphasis mine].</p>
</blockquote>

<p>And there it is. Not exactly a confession. This is starting to sound more than a little fishy...</p>

<blockquote>
<p>“[W]hat my work has done is give permission to many of those ready to leave the religion to make a clean break. We’ve got the evidence now to show exactly where the story of Jesus came from. Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history. To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>No bias to see here. Move along.</p>
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title: The Laws of Nature
topic: Science
author: Melinda Penner
date: 09/26/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-laws-of-nature
content:
            <div> 
		<p>The constant laws of nature that are the foundation of modern science and mathematics were a development of thinking around the 15-16th centuries—and grounded on theology, the God of the Bible.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid</p>

<p>in night</p>

<p>God said: “Let Newton be!”</p>

<p>and all was light.</p>

<p>Alexander Pope’s famous couplet gives the impression that Newton’s genius lay in his discovery of previously hidden laws of nature. This disguises what was both a novel feature of the science of the seventeenth century and its enduring legacy—the idea that there existed “laws of nature”&nbsp;to be discovered in the first place.</p>

<p>What are laws of nature? For the Middle Ages, natural laws had been universal moral rules established by God. The injunction against murder, recognized by all cultures, was a typical example of a natural law. The concept of a physical law of nature was completely absent. That came only as Christian thinkers extended God’s legislative power to the natural world. As philosopher and scientist René Descartes (1596-1650) expressed it, “God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.”</p>

<p>For its time, this was a radical claim. Following Aristotle, medieval scientists had imputed immanent tendencies to physical entities, saying for example that objects went into motion because they were seeking their own natural resting place. Nature had thus enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy.</p>

<p>In the new science, however, natural objects had no inherent properties, and it was God who directly controlled their interactions. In much the same way that the Deity had instituted moral rules, he was now seen to have enacted laws that governed the natural world.</p>

<p>“Nature,”&nbsp;observed Robert Boyle, “is nothing else but God acting according to certain laws he himself fix’d.”</p>

<p>The fact that God was the author of these laws meant that they shared something of his nature. Descartes, for example, argued that because of their source, natural laws must be eternal and unchanging. He went on to justify his law of the conservation of motion by appealing to God’s immutability. Nature was constant because God was immutable.</p>

<p>This provided a crucial foundation for experimental science. In the words of Newton’s predecessor in the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, Isaac Barrow, experimentalists “do not suspect that Nature is inconstant, and the great Author of the universe unlike himself.”&nbsp;Only because they assume that God’s decrees are unchanging do they expect the consistent results of a number of experiments to hold true ever after.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/2002/issue76/5.18.html" target="_blank">You can read more here.</a></p>
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title: Is the Promise Yours to Claim?
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 08/14/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/is-the-promise-yours-to-claim-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Understanding the author’s message is one of the fundamental skills needed to know how to read the Word accurately. Greg gives some simple steps to understand Bible promises.</em></p>

<p>When I was a new believer in the 70s, part of the standard “gear”&nbsp;for Jesus Movement Christians was a dog-eared paperback copy of <em>The Jesus Person Pocket Promise Book</em>.</p>

<p>It seemed like a sensational idea at the time, collect God’s promises, and then cash them in as needed. Now, nearly 40 years later—though the promises of God are no less “precious and magnificent”&nbsp;(2 Peter 1:4)—I think twice when people claim them.</p>

<p>Promises are frequently abused, in many cases by people who should know better. A promise not carefully tethered to the details of the text becomes an empty exercise of relativistic wishful thinking.</p>

<p>Knowledge—“an accurately informed mind”—is the first characteristic of a good ambassador. Ambassadors need to get the content of the message right before they can accurately pass it on to others. Since everything we offer on God’s behalf consists of promises of some sort, mistakes here really matter.</p>

<p>A biblical promise is a binding pledge from God to do—or not do—something specific. If the promise is made to you, you have a right to expect God to keep His word. If you are not the rightful owner, though, you may not lay claim to it. It is pointless to expropriate promises made to another, and can lead to disappointment and discouragement.</p>

<p>But how do you know if you are the fortunate beneficiary? You find out by looking closely at the details of the promise itself and applying two simple principles.</p>

<p>The correct meaning of any biblical passage is the meaning the author had in mind when he wrote it. A promise is only a promise when it is used as its maker intended. We discover that intention by paying attention to the specifics—the words, the conditions, the recipient, the timing, the historical setting—the details that make up the context of the promise.</p>

<p>The process can be organized into steps by asking (and answering) four questions: Who?, What?, Why?, and When?*</p>

<p><strong>Who?-</strong> Identify the particular person or people the promise is made to. The promise may be for a specific individual, for a group, or for anyone. Ask, Am I that person? If the promise is to a group (e.g. Jews, Christians) ask, Am I part of the group?</p>

<p><strong>What?</strong>—Zero in on the particulars of the promise. Specify what the promise actually commits to. Ask, What will happen (or not happen) when the promise is fulfilled?</p>

<p><strong>Why?</strong>—Why will the promise be fulfilled, that is, what must happen first? Note the conditions or requirements the promise hinges on, often signaled by an if/then clause. Ask, Do I meet the requirements?</p>

<p><strong>When?</strong>—This is the promise time. The promise may be for a particular time (“...at this time next year...”) or for an unspecified time. Ask the question, What is the time of the promise, if any?</p>

<p>Be sure to get your answers by looking carefully at the words of the promise itself in light of the larger context of the passage. Keep in mind you may have to read an entire chapter or more to gather enough information to answer your questions.</p>

<p>Now, a short homework assignment. Here is a list of popular promises. Grab a sheet of paper and apply the four questions to each one and see what you come up with. This will be fun or painful, depending on how you’ve read these promises in the past.</p>

<p>John 8:32 (note 8:31-36); Romans 8:28 (note 29-30); Jeremiah 29:11 (the context begins at the beginning of the chapter); 2 Chronicles 7:14 (the full context starts in chapter 6. Make note of the details of Solomon’s prayer in 6:17-27 in light of God’s response in chapter 7.)</p>

<p>We can only legitimately claim a biblical promise if it is rightfully ours. If the promise is for us, and we have satisfied the conditions, and the promise is for our time, then we can count on God to keep His word.</p>

<p>If not, then we must leave the promise to its rightful owner and profit from the text by learning what we can from God’s faithful dealings with them.</p>

<p>*I am indebted to my brother, David Koukl, for this <a href="http://www.str.org/articles/promises-promises-bible-promises-worksheet#.UguqJxbtXF8" target="_blank">useful exercise</a>.</p>
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title: A Simple Explanation of the Cosmological Argument
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 08/21/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/a-simple-explanation-of-the-cosmological-argument
content:
            <div> 
		<p>William Lane Craig’s organization, <a href="http://www.reasonablefaith.org/kalam?src=email" target="_blank">Reasonable Faith</a>, created a simple, visually interesting, brief <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COJ0ED1mV7s" target="_blank">video</a> explaining the basics of the <em>kalam</em> cosmological argument. This is a great discussion starter for you to pass on to your friends.</p>

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title: Preparation Leads to Action
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Greg Koukl
date: 09/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/preparation-leads-to-action
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Our preparation for challenges to our Christian convictions is different when we have an expectation that preparation will make a difference. And when we have a plan, we are more likely to act.</em></p>

<p>Do you know what the survival rate for airplane accidents is? You won’t believe it. Take a guess right now. I bet you won’t be anywhere close.</p>

<p>On average, ninety-six out of every 100 people involved in airplane mishaps survive the ordeal. Amazing, isn’t it? Even with serious accidents, as long as there was some chance of surviving, three-quarters of the passengers get out alive.</p>

<p>And here’s another shocker. Many of the people who do perish could have survived, but didn’t. So what makes the difference? If you guessed panic, you’d be wrong. Yes, panic kills, but it almost never happens in desperate situations like airplane disasters, earthquakes, or terrorist attacks like 9/11.</p>

<p>Most people don’t panic. They freeze. They do nothing, because they don’t know what to do. And that’s what kills them. Usually, two things make the difference between life and death: planning and action.</p>

<p>Since I learned those statistics, my preparation at the beginning of flights has completely changed. Before, I never paid attention to things like exits, flight attendant emergency instructions, or reviewing the safety card. What was the point? If something went wrong, I figured, I was a goner anyway.</p>

<p>Now I know differently. I note the exits and try to get a seat close to one (seats two to five rows away are the safest). I review the safety card so I know how each emergency exit door on the plane works. I am fully alert with my seatbelt tight and my shoes on during the most vulnerable times—the first three and the last eight minutes of any flight.</p>

<p>And I have a plan in case something goes wrong, a plan I review every flight at take-off and just before landing.</p>

<p>Here’s the point: Our preparation is different when we have an expectation that preparation will make a difference. And when we have a plan, we are more likely to act.</p>

<p>That’s why having the first two <a href="http://www.str.org/articles/the-columbo-tactic" target="_blank">Columbo questions</a> handy—“What do you mean by that?”&nbsp;and “How did you come to that conclusion?”—makes being Christ’s ambassador so much easier. Whatever situation you face, you have a basic game-plan at the ready. (You can read more about <em><a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK316" target="_blank">Tactics</a></em> here.)</p>

<p>But you can do better than that. When I speak, I sometimes ask audiences, “How many people here hate taking tests?”&nbsp;Virtually every hand shoots up. Then I ask how many mind taking tests when they know the answers. The hands go down. Tests aren’t the problem. Instead, we fear being immobilized by our ignorance.</p>

<p>This reminds me of Yogi Berra’s memorable malaprop, “I wish I had an answer to that, because I’m tired of answering that question.”&nbsp;Yogi would have been less “tired”&nbsp;if he had planned ahead to be ready for that vexing question when it inevitably popped up.</p>

<p>So, I want you to think for a moment about the most vexing challenge you face from a skeptic as an ambassador for Christ, that issue you dread being mentioned, the question you hope never comes up. Next, do some research and develop a plan of response that is tactically sound.</p>

<p>I used to flinch at the problem of evil. It’s a popular challenge that is emotionally compelling and difficult to work through in a short conversation, even if you know the intricacies of the issue. So I developed a short game plan.</p>

<p>I know the first question I’ll ask when someone raises the issue—“So you believe in objective evil then?”&nbsp;(If they don’t, the challenge disappears. No objective evil; no problem of evil. This roots out the relativists.)</p>

<p>I also know my follow-up question—“What do you mean by ’evil’?”&nbsp;(I don’t want them to give me examples of evil—murder, torture, wanton suffering—but to tell me what it is that makes those things objectively evil in the first place. This leads to a discussion about transcendent moral law and the need for a transcendent moral law Maker. God has to exist before you can even raise the <a href="https://www.str.org/articles/the-problem-of-evil-is-everyon-s-problem#.Wac9StN95R0" target="_blank">objection</a> about evil.)</p>

<p>When people ask if Jesus is the “<a href="http://www.str.org/publications/is-jesus-the-only-way#.UjyZsBbtXF8" target="_blank">only way</a>”&nbsp;(another awkward challenge), I say, “Well, that’s what Jesus thought. Do you think He had any insight into spiritual things?”&nbsp;Now the ball is in their court, but this time they have to take on Jesus, not me.</p>

<p>In the last chapter in my Tactics book, I mentioned a Marine Corps training slogan: The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle. This is the same lesson we have been talking about. The easiest way to beat fear is to remember two simple concepts that will save your bacon in just about any disaster: preparation and action.</p>
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title: How to Reach Someone Who’s Not God’s Type?
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Greg Koukl
date: 08/07/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/how-to-reach-someone-who-s-not-god-s-type-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>How do you reach out to someone who is not looking for God and does not even believe He exists? That’s a question I’ve asked myself more than once, which is why the opening lines of a little book I recently stumbled across immediately grabbed my attention.</em></p>

<blockquote>
<p>This book sets out to do what might seem to be a straight-forward task: to recount the experiences of a few months in my life in which I walked away from atheism and entered into Christian faith. Nothing is ever as simple as that. It is no light matter to meet God after having denied Him all one’s life.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>A delightful read—and also a <a href="/w/holly-ordway-not-god-s-type-a-rational-academic-finds-a-radical-faith-august-22-2010-?inheritRedirect=true" target="_blank">fascinating radio interview with STR</a>—followed. The book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Not-Gods-Type-Rational-Academic/dp/0802431941/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1375900552&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=not+god%27s+type" target="_blank"><em>Not God’s Type—A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith</em></a>, is a memoir by Holly Ordway of her journey from atheism to Christ.</p>

<p>The guide God used to shepherd Holly on her pilgrimage was not a professional apologist, but rather her fencing coach—an ordinary, thoughtful Christian named Josh in whom she saw Jesus for an entire year before the name “Jesus”&nbsp;ever came up in conversation.</p>

<p><strong>Josh was the personification of wisdom—“an artful method”—the second critical characteristic of a good ambassador. Here are some of the lessons I gleaned from Holly’s account of her friendship with Josh and his wife, Heidi.</strong></p>

<p><strong>One, respect people.</strong> Period. Treat others as special in God’s eyes regardless of their spiritual condition. To Josh, Holly wasn’t a heathen to be converted, but a human to be valued. He never reproached her for her unbelief, but treated her with genuine grace, dignity, and honor. He also did not fulfill any of the negative stereotypes she had of Christians. Instead, his character silently spoke volumes.</p>

<p><strong>Two, begin at their beginning.</strong> Start at square one for that person. The basic message of forgiveness rests upon a number of assumptions about God, morality, guilt, Jesus, and more. Don’t presume the other person has crossed all those bridges.</p>

<p>“What’s helpful varies from person to person,”&nbsp;Holly pointed out. “I was glad for Josh’s willingness to be a guide as I entered this strange new territory, rather than trying to choose the path for me.”&nbsp;Like Josh, be a coach, a guide for the journey. Don’t choose the path for them. Answer their questions first, not the questions you think they should be asking.</p>

<p><strong>Three, don’t push.</strong>&nbsp;“Josh didn’t try to close the deal on me—ever,”&nbsp;Holly wrote. If he had, she would have bolted. “Pressing for a decision [too early] would have been a disaster. It would have taken very little to make me close up and turn away, vulnerable and confused as I was.”</p>

<p>Don’t be afraid to move slowly. People need time to think, to digest, to reflect before they can ultimately commit. Don’t press for a “decision”&nbsp;for Christ when a conversion to Christ is what’s necessary. Trust the Spirit to do the deep work. Remember, God is in control.</p>

<p><strong>Four, use questions.</strong> Josh consistently used carefully crafted questions to make his point. “If you could do something wrong that would benefit yourself,”&nbsp;he asked, “and you knew that no one would ever know about it, would you do it?”&nbsp;When Holly said no, he asked, “Why not? If there is no God, why be moral when it would benefit you personally to be immoral?”&nbsp;Josh was not trying to score points in an argument. Instead, he was probing the tension in Holly’s worldview, graciously challenging her inconsistency while presenting new ideas for her to consider.</p>

<p><strong>Five, be clear.</strong> Make the central issues unmistakable. When Holly asked Josh what would happen to her when she died, he told her the truth—simply, without ambiguity, but without animosity. “I believe we will come before God in judgment,”&nbsp;he said, “and He will give each person either perfect justice or perfect mercy.”&nbsp;When asked, “What, exactly, would I be getting myself into?,”&nbsp;Josh told her two things that Jesus said: “My yoke is light,”&nbsp;and “Take up your cross and follow me.”&nbsp;“I’ll let you ponder that.”</p>

<p>Holly was willing to consider taking up her own cross to follow Jesus because mercy and safety could be found only under His cross. Sadly, many Christians today flee this truth. Their Jesus-is-my-savior-but-He-doesn’t-have-to-be-yours Christianity may protect them from criticism, but there is no real safety in this “confused confession.”</p>

<p>Why are these Christians both confessing Christ and retreating from the Gospel at the same time? To answer that question I completed a little book, new for our <a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK347" target="_blank">Ambassador’s Guide series</a>, identifying—and repudiating—three possible reasons: theological uncertainty, religious pluralism, and Christian inclusivism.</p>

<p>Josh was especially deft at navigating the challenge that Holly’s situation presented. Sensitivity like his is developed over time, learning how to proceed with wisdom—“an artful method”—based on knowledge—“an accurately informed mind.”</p>

<p>With the new Ambassador’s Guide, you’ll expand your knowledge on the central truth of faith and trust in Jesus. And by thoughtfully applying the five principles listed above, you can be a wise and effective “coach”&nbsp;for dear souls trying to find their way.</p>
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title: Kepler and the Scientific Revolution
topic: Science
author: Melinda Penner
date: 10/03/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/kepler-and-the-scientific-revolution
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Joseph Spradley <a href="http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/2002/issue76/6.21.html" target="_blank">writes</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Schooled not only in mathematics and astronomy but also in theology, [Johannes] Kepler initially intended to serve as a minister. However, in 1594 Lutheran authorities assigned him a job as a mathematics teacher in Graz, Austria. There his duties included compiling an annual calendar of astrological predictions, which he did with reluctance and cautious generality.</p>

<p>In 1596, Kepler published his Cosmographic Mystery, on the spacing of the planetary orbits. On the eve of its publication, he wrote to his astronomy teacher at the university of Tubingen, Michael Maestlin, “I am devoting my effort...for the glory of God, who wants to be recognized from the Book of Nature.”</p>

<p>Kepler’s efforts produced their most famous fruit in his first two laws of planetary motion, published in his 1609 masterpiece, The New Astronomy, and his third law of planetary motion, discovered in 1618. These laws set the stage for the emerging scientific revolution. Fifty years later, Isaac Newton’s search for an underlying explanation for Kepler’s laws led him to formulate his own law of universal gravitation.</p>
</blockquote>
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title: Early Abolitionist
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 09/19/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/early-abolitionist
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Cappadocian Church Father, Gregory of Nyssa, lived in the 4th century and was an outspoken critic of slavery.</p>

<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/gregoryn/#H7" target="_blank">Because</a> he was committed to the idea that humans have a unique value that demands respect, Gregory was an early and vocal opponent of slavery and also of poverty. Against the former Gregory marshals three arguments (Ecclesiastes IV [665]): (1) Only God has the right to enslave humans, and God does not choose to do so; indeed, it was God who gave human beings their free wills. (2) How dare a person take that precious entity-the only part of the created order to have been made in God’s image-and enslave it! (3) As humans who were created in the divine image, all people are radically equal; therefore, it is hubristic for some to arrogate to themselves absolute authority over others.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Robert B. Kruschwitzm from Baylor University <a href="http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/110986.pdf" target="_blank">writes</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The true offense of slavery, Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-394) argued in his fourth homily on the book of Ecclesiastes, is that God created humans to be free. Commenting on the Teacher’s proud claim “I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house”&nbsp;(Ecclesiastes 2:7), Gregory wrote:</p>

<p>If man is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). God would not there-fore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?</p>
</blockquote>
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title: Once Gay, Always Gay?
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 08/01/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/once-gay-always-gay-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for August 2013</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>The “experts”&nbsp;have spoken. Change in sexual orientation is not possible. Homosexuality, we’re told, is an inborn and unchangeable trait, like eye color. Case closed.</p>

<p>This implies that adolescents with same-sex attraction (SSA) or homoerotic dreams are manifesting symptoms of an underlying reality: They are homosexual. Because sexual orientation is fixed at birth (so the theory goes), these desires will endure through their teenage years and into adulthood.</p>

<p>This view is at odds with scientific research, though. Several studies report the opposite—that SSA among adolescents <em>is</em> <em>more likely to change than remain fixed</em>.</p>

<p>One study* followed approximately 10,800 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 22 years old. Of the 16 year-old males who had exclusively SSA, 61% had opposite-sex attraction at age 17. For same-sex attracted females, 81% changed to opposite attraction in just one year.</p>

<p>The study also compared sexual attraction at ages 17 and 22, with similar results. For example, 75% of adolescent males with SSA at age 17 had opposite-sex attraction at age 22.</p>

<p>Dr. Neil Whitehead, a research scientist who worked for the New Zealand government for 24 years and the United Nations for another four years, analyzed this study. He notes that although a small percentage of heterosexual adolescents developed homosexuality, the vast majority transitioned in the opposite direction. Based on the data, 16 year-olds with SSA are “25 times more likely to change towards heterosexuality at the age of 17 than those with a heterosexual orientation are likely to change towards bi-sexuality or homosexuality.”&nbsp;That means that heterosexuality is 25 times more stable than homosexuality. It also seems to suggest that heterosexuality is more of a “default”&nbsp;orientation.</p>

<p>That’s not all. Approximately 3% of the current heterosexual population once claimed to have either SSA or bisexual attractions. That means there are more people who have changed to exclusively heterosexual attraction than there are currently homosexuals and bisexuals combined. As Dr. Whitehead put it, “Ex-gays outnumber actual gays.”</p>

<p>This is a stunning report. Not only does it contradict the widely held belief that homosexuality is unchangeable, but it demonstrates that change is prevalent in adolescence. Moreover, these young men and women experienced change <em>without any known therapeutic or faith-based intervention</em>. It was through “natural”&nbsp;life experiences.</p>

<p>This research seems too good to be true. Some might suspect this study was conducted by Christian investigators or comes from an obscure source. But the data is from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a project by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and mandated by the United States Congress. Its goal is to investigate adolescent health and is the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal survey of its kind.</p>

<p>The researchers that focused on sexual orientation published their findings in the reputable journal <em>Archives of Sexual Behavior</em> in 2007. In fact, they were so shocked by the amount of fluidity in sexual attraction that it caused them to question the concept of sexual orientation altogether.</p>

<p>Though these findings go against mainstream thinking, they come as little surprise to me. In fact, I wrote (co-authored with Greg Koukl) the most recent <em>Solid Ground</em> article titled, “<a href="http://www.str.org/w/nature-or-nurture-" target="_blank">Homosexuality: Nature or Nurture?</a>”&nbsp;Not only do I describe the causes of same-sex attraction in the piece, but I highlight some of the evidence that change is possible among adult homosexuals.</p>

<p>In addition to that article, this month Stand to Reason is publishing my latest book, <a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BK379" target="_blank"><em>The Ambassador’s Guide to Understanding Homosexuality</em></a>. In it, I explain SSA and the possibility of change in more detail. I also cover questions about interpreting biblical passages on homosexuality, whether one can be a “gay”&nbsp;Christian, and explain how Christians are actually very tolerant. In addition, I devote a chapter to practical principles to improve your interaction with homosexuals as well as specific guidelines to answer difficult dilemmas you might face with homosexuals in the church, your family, and your friends.</p>

<p>I’m grateful you’ve stood with me financially this year as I’ve produced these written works. Without your partnership, the 45,000-person readership of <em>Solid Ground</em> would never learn this material. Plus, the book will serve as an even more comprehensive guide on this material. You and I both know this controversial topic must be engaged and not ignored. Thank you.</p>

<p>For truth and compassion,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</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: Wisdom vs. Technique
topic: Christian Living
author: Melinda Penner
date: 09/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/wisdom-vs-technique
content:
            <div> 
		<p>You may know that one of the topics Greg teaches on is <a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=CD105" target="_blank">“Decision Making and the Will of God.”</a>&nbsp;Greg shows that the Bible teaches us not to listen for God’s voice in order to make decisions, but to develop wisdom. (If you’re not familiar with it, you can read out it <a href="http://www.str.org/publications/does-god-whisper-part-1#.UjyclhbtXF8" target="_blank">here</a>.)</p>

<p>Nancy Guthrie make a good <a href="http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2013/09/18/why-do-we-say-god-told-me/" target="_blank">observation</a> the common practice of hearing God’s voice to give us guidance:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Does it really make a difference when we expect God to speak to us through the Scriptures rather than waiting to hear a divine voice in our heads? I think it does.</p>

<p>When we know that God speaks personally and powerfully through his Word, we don’t have to feel that our relationship to Christ is sub-par, or that we are experiencing a less-than Christian life if we don’t sense God giving us extra-biblical words of instruction or promise. When we know God speaks through his Word we are not obligated to accept—indeed, we can be appropriately skeptical toward—claims by any book, teacher, preacher, or even friend when they write or say, “God told me...”&nbsp;We don’t have to wait until we hear God give us the go-ahead before we say “yes”&nbsp;or “no”&nbsp;to a request or make a decision. We can consult the Scriptures and rest in the wisdom and insight the Holy Spirit is developing in us and feel free to make a decision.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>We’ve heard from many people over the years after they’ve heard Greg teach on this that they are relieved because they thought something was wrong with their relationship with God because they didn’t hear Him.</p>

<p>I think there’s a further problem when someone is waiting to hear God’s voice. They never engage in the activity the Bible does teach is meant to help us make good decisions—becoming virtuous and wise people. By focusing on a technique rather than becoming the kind of people who know how to apply Scripture to our decisions, Christians don’t grow into the kinds of people Proverbs describes.</p>

<p>I heard a quote by C.S. Lewis recently that summed this point up:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>We need to be focused on trying to become virtuous, wise people rather than learning a technique the Bible doesn’t teach.</p>
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title: Contend Earnestly for the Faith
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 09/03/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/contend-earnestly-for-the-faith
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Three years ago I sat on a short bench in a small stone church on the outskirts of Oxford. In a tiny graveyard outside was a flat tombstone with the name “Clive Staples Lewis”&nbsp;etched into the granite.</p>

<p>The pew my wife and I were sitting in was the same place C.S. Lewis occupied with his brother Warnie every Sunday morning for decades as they worshiped together at Trinity Church.</p>

<p>This man, C.S. Lewis, probably more than anyone else in the 20th century, lived out the admonition of a passage I want you to think about. Here it is:</p>

<p>Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. (Jude 3)</p>

<p>Never before in my lifetime has this verse been more important for Christians to hear, consider, and heed.</p>

<p>Note three elements in this verse that are essential to Jude’s entreaty.</p>

<p>First, Jude makes reference to a specific message with specific content, the “faith once and for all delivered”—the foundation of “our common salvation.”&nbsp;Second is the admonition to “contend earnestly”&nbsp;for that faith—to proclaim it, guard it, and defend it. Finally, Jude reminds us that it had been “delivered”&nbsp;to the saints—passed on from the disciples to the next generation in the church.</p>

<p>Here’s why those three elements of Jude’s admonition are critical for you and me right now. At the beginning of the 21st century we are in the cultural and theological fight of our lives. The attack is coming from many directions, but we are facing serious challenges on two broad fronts. Simply put, we have trouble in the world and trouble in the church.</p>

<h2>Trouble in the World</h2>

<p>Currently, the Christian worldview is facing assault on multiple fronts.</p>

<p>Our story starts, “In the beginning, God,”&nbsp;yet a host of dedicated writers—collectively known as the “new atheists”&nbsp;<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sup>—have been doing their best to ensure our story never gets off the ground. There are also attacks on the integrity of our authority base, the Bible,<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2">2</a></sup> and a myriad of assaults on the historicity of the central player in our drama—Jesus of Nazareth.</p>

<p>In the midst of this academic attack, there is an increasingly pervasive godlessness and a militant relativism in the culture. The 21st century began as an era of radical skepticism, especially in the area of morality and religion. As a result, the moral rulebook is being rewritten. Right has become wrong and wrong right.</p>

<p>In addition, there is an increasing hostility towards those who take Jesus seriously regarding the Great Commission. Jesus said he came, “To seek to save that which was lost”&nbsp;(Lk. 19:10), “to give His life as a ransom for many”&nbsp;(Matt. 20:28), and “to call sinners to repentance”&nbsp;(Lk. 5:32). That was the way He described His own mission.</p>

<p>Yet when we proclaim this message—Jesus’&nbsp;central message—we court conflict. Indeed, to be faithful to Jesus’&nbsp;claim that He is the only Savior is increasingly considered an example of “spreading hate.”</p>

<p>For example, a number of years ago the Southern Baptists planned to evangelize Jews during a summer outreach in Chicago. A consortium of religious groups in that city—including Christian denominations, amazingly—demanded that the Baptists stay home. They warned that evangelism in their city would encourage hate crimes. In fact, a Jewish group claimed it invited “theological hatred.”<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3">3</a></sup></p>

<p>This tendency to see the Gospel as a message of hate gained momentum after 9/11. As the smoke still billowed from the wreckage of World Trade I &amp; II, Thomas Friedman wrote a column in the <em>New York Times</em> titled “The Real War”&nbsp;warning of what he termed “religious totalitarianism”:</p>

<h5>&nbsp;</h5>

<p>If 9/11 was indeed the onset of World War III, we have to understand what this war is about. We’re not fighting to eradicate “terrorism.”&nbsp;Terrorism is just a tool. We’re fighting to defeat an ideology: religious totalitarianism...<em>a view of the world that my faith must reign supreme and can be affirmed and held passionately only if all others are negated</em><strong>.</strong> That’s bin Ladenism. But unlike Nazism, religious totalitarianism can’t be fought by armies alone. It has to be fought in schools, mosques, churches and synagogues, and can be defeated only with the help of imams, rabbis and priests.<sup id="fnref:4"><a href="#fn:4">4</a></sup> [emphasis added]</p>

<h5>&nbsp;</h5>

<p>He then applauded a rabbi who “...set up his own schools in Israel to compete with fundamentalist Jews, Muslims, and Christians, who used their schools to preach exclusivist religious visions.”<sup id="fnref:5"><a href="#fn:5">5</a></sup></p>

<p>This same theme keeps popping up everywhere I go: We are the enemy. Last fall on the radio I heard Chris Matthews of “Hardball”&nbsp;fame say the people in America most like the Taliban were the Evangelical Christians.</p>

<p>This puts any church committed to fulfilling the Great Commission directly in the crosshairs of the culture wars.</p>

<h2>Trouble in the Church</h2>

<p>There’s not only trouble in the world—trouble from the outside—but there is serious trouble on the inside. Sadly, in spite of the plethora of materials available to believers, there is still a profound biblical illiteracy in Christian circles.</p>

<p>In 2005, researchers Christian Smith and Melinda Denton conducted a “National Study of Youth and Religion”&nbsp;and recorded their finding in their book, <em>Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers</em>. Here’s what they discovered.</p>

<p>First, they learned there is no generation gap with young people when it comes to religion. Teens were not “spiritual seekers,”&nbsp;but rather were at home in church circles with 75% identifying with some form of Christianity.</p>

<p>The second thing they discovered, however, was not comforting. When these same committed Christian teenagers were interviewed one-on-one about the specifics of their convictions, almost none from any religious background could articulate the most basic beliefs of the faith.</p>

<p>Smith and Denton summed up their theology as “moralistic, therapeutic deism.”&nbsp;To these teens, religion was about being nice and enjoying a relationship with a God who mostly wanted them to be happy and feel good about themselves—which was, as it turned out, the very same religious view of their parents.</p>

<p>But the picture gets worse.</p>

<p>In September of 2009, I was a guest at an interfaith dialog in Los Angeles with Roman Catholic priest Gregory Coiro before a large Jewish audience on Rosh Hashanah.</p>

<p>When asked why Jesus was the only way of salvation, I offered a lucid account of the Gospel. Father Coiro then affirmed the importance of Jesus, but assured the audience that their honest and sincere pursuit of Judaism counted as saving faith in God’s eyes. These Jews were safe, beneficiaries of the cross even though they rejected Jesus.</p>

<p>Surprisingly, large numbers of Protestants agree. God doesn’t really care what faith you follow since they all teach basically the same life lessons. In the midst of this theological confusion, Christians of all stripes are falling away from the truth en masse, becoming casualties of a culture that celebrates pluralism.</p>

<p>With trouble in the world and trouble in the church, what do we do to fulfill Jude’s exhortation? Paul’s last letter gives the answer.</p>

<h2>Paul’s Swan Song</h2>

<p>If you visit Rome and take the right tour, you will be shown an ancient cistern northwest of the city. Originally meant to hold water, it later served as a dungeon. Mamertine prison is a circular, low-ceiling, underground room of rock where prisoners were lowered in on a rope.</p>

<p>I’ve seen pictures of the dank, dismal interior. Against one wall there is a low, protruding rock shelf of sorts. It’s the only flat place in the cell, the only surface someone could write on. This is likely the very spot—this small ledge of rock—where the apostle Paul wrote his spiritual last will and testament. We know it as 2 Timothy.</p>

<p>Of all the New Testament books, 2 Timothy is my favorite. It was Paul’s final message, his swan song, the last thing he ever wrote. It is clear, uncomplicated, and to the point, speaking forcefully and practically to the challenges of the 21st century.</p>

<p>2 Timothy gives the answer to our question about guarding the Gospel, because that is the book’s theme, found explicitly in 1:14: “Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.”&nbsp;Paul’s message is absolutely vital to each one of us today because he tells us exactly what it looks like in any century to contend earnestly for the faith.</p>

<p>You see, the early church was also facing trouble on two fronts.</p>

<p>There was trouble for Christians in the world. They were under tremendous attack in that culture. In A.D. 64, a fire broke out in Rome that raged for six days and seven nights, totally destroying a great part of the city. Emperor Nero falsely charged the Christians and punished them with “the most exquisite tortures,”&nbsp;as the historian, Tacitus, records in his <em>Annals</em>:</p>

<p>They were covered with the hides of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and, when day declined, burned to serve for nocturnal lights. Nero offered his own gardens for that spectacle.<sup id="fnref:6"><a href="#fn:6">6</a></sup></p>

<p>In the midst of this extreme physical persecution of the church, Paul warned of a pervasive godlessness coming in the culture:</p>

<h3>&nbsp;</h3>

<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>Timothy would also be facing trouble in the church:</p>

<h3>&nbsp;</h3>

<p>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>

<h2>Paul’s Simple Solution</h2>

<p>What is Paul’s answer to Timothy’s challenge, which is the same challenge we face? It’s refreshingly simple and the heart of it can be captured in three words: “You, however, continue...”&nbsp;(3:14).</p>

<p>Paul does not tell Timothy to look forward to any new movements of the Spirit, any fresh word from God, or any insider’s spiritual fad. He points not to future, but rather to the past. “Timothy, don’t look forward,”&nbsp;he says. “Look backward.”&nbsp;Here is the full citation, part of which I’m sure is familiar to you:</p>

<p>You, however, <em>continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of</em>, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the <em>sacred writings</em> which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. <em>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</em>. (2 Tim. 3:14-17)</p>

<p>Then Paul amps it up another notch. At the beginning of chapter four he challenges Timothy with the most sober language he can muster:</p>

<p>“I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His Kingdom: <em>Preach the Word</em>. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction. Be sober in all things. Endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry”&nbsp;(4:1-2, 5).</p>

<p>Simply put, Paul tells Timothy to guard the Gospel by <em>continuing</em> in the truth <em>already</em> revealed. In other words, when all else fails, read—and follow—the directions.</p>

<p>But that is not enough.</p>

<h2>Passing the Baton</h2>

<p>I want you to notice something about 2 Timothy. Paul wrote his final letter to a person, not a group. He passed the baton of the Gospel to a faithful individual, a young man named Timothy, and then told him to do the same: “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also”&nbsp;(2 Tim. 2:2).</p>

<p>Note the four generations in this passage: Paul, Timothy, faithful disciples, and “others”—the baton being handed down from one individual person to the next. Paul knew it would not be enough for any Christian to <em>continue</em> in the truth. It also needed to be <em>handed down</em>. Indeed, guarding the Gospel is not complete until it has been passed on effectively.</p>

<p>When I became a follower of Christ at UCLA in 1973, I was a loud, opinionated, obnoxious, long-haired hippie. Now, 39 years later, I am no longer a long-haired hippie. I’m also not nearly as obnoxious as I used to be. I owe that transformation largely to one man: Craig Englert.</p>

<p>For two years—at great risk to life and limb—Craig took me under his wing. I’ve had other mentors since then, but I know with certainty that without Craig I would not be in the position I’m in today.</p>

<p>Craig Englert and others who followed him in my life were not content to guard the truth. They needed to entrust it to others—even me, as unlikely as it seemed at the time—in order for the Gospel to go forward. They passed the baton to me, as Paul had done with Timothy. Indeed, they were passing the <em>same baton</em> Paul passed to Timothy that was then passed down for two thousand years—from one, to another, to another until it was mine to carry.</p>

<p>In the summer Olympics of 2008 in Beijing, American runners suffered a humiliating defeat in the 4 X 100 relays. In the anchor leg, Darvis Patton handed the baton to Tyson Gay, but Gay never got it. In the middle of the handoff, they dropped the baton.</p>

<p>Tyson Gay was our best sprinter. We had the fastest team. It didn’t matter. They dropped the baton, so we lost the race. In fact, we never even finished that race.</p>

<p>Paul told Timothy, “If anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules”&nbsp;(2:5). “Timothy,”&nbsp;Paul said, “you cannot drop the baton.”</p>

<p>And we cannot drop the baton, either. If we do, we lose.</p>

<h2>No Surprises</h2>

<p>So how do we guard the Gospel? Two ways. First, we continue in the things already delivered to us. Second, we pass the baton. Those are the rules.</p>

<p>If we disregard Paul’s solution, we should not be surprised when we remain children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming (Eph. 4:14).</p>

<p>If we don’t guard the Gospel, we should not be surprised when we are taken captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ (Col. 2:8).</p>

<p>If we don’t pass the baton, we should not be surprised when we will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have our ears tickled, we accumulate for ourselves teachers in accordance to our own desires, and turn away our ears from the truth, and turn aside to myths (2 Tim. 4:3-4).</p>

<p>I asked Father Coiro at that meeting on Rosh Hashanah if there were any New Testament evidence for the assurances he offered our Jewish audience. He cited Jesus’&nbsp;comment, “For he who is not against us is for us”&nbsp;(Mk. 9:40). The Jews in our company, he pointed out, were not against Jesus. They must then, by default, be for Him, the priest reasoned.</p>

<p>Yet Jesus also said, “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters”&nbsp;(Matt. 12:30). So what do we make of this apparent contradiction in Jesus’&nbsp;teaching? Check the context. When we do, we discover that Jesus was referring to entirely different groups.</p>

<p>In the first case, Jesus was speaking of those who had been performing miracles in His name, but were not part of His core group of disciples—Christians, in other words, not unbelieving Jews. In the second case, Jesus was speaking to Jews who had rejected his Messianic claim.</p>

<p>The question for us, then, is, <em>What kind of group were Father Coiro and I talking to at our event?</em> People who were working miracles in the name of Jesus, or people who were rejecting Jesus’&nbsp;messianic claim? Father Coiro had applied the wrong passage to our Jewish listeners.</p>

<p>When Jesus was speaking to a group like we had been that day, He said, “Unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins”&nbsp;(Jn. 8:24). When Peter was speaking to a group like we had been that day, he said, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved”&nbsp;(Acts 4:12). When Paul was writing about a group like we had been speaking to that day he wrote:</p>

<p>I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. (Rom. 10:2-4)</p>

<h2>Finishing the Race</h2>

<p>The key to contending for the faith—to surviving the spiritual onslaught of the 21st century—is to guard the Gospel. The key to that is found in two simple phrases. One, “Continue in the things you have learned.”&nbsp;Back to the basics. Back to the Word as it has been entrusted to us. And two, entrust it to faithful disciples who will be able to teach others also.</p>

<p>That’s it. Guard the Gospel by continuing in the truth already revealed, then pass the baton. Proclaim the truth faithfully, guard it diligently, and pass it on carefully. That is how we contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. That is how we guard the Gospel Paul entrusted to Timothy, now entrusted to us.</p>

<p>And not until we do that can we say what Paul said at the end of his magnificent letter: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”<sup id="fnref:7"><a href="#fn:7">7</a></sup></p>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1">Christopher Hitchens, <em>God Is Not Great—How Religion Poisons Everything</em>; Richard Dawkins, <em>The God Delusion</em>; Daniel Dennett, <em>Breaking the Spell</em>; and Sam Harris, <em>The End of Faith</em>. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:2">E.g., authors like Bart Ehrman with his best seller, <em>Misquoting Jesus</em>. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:3">Jeffery L. Sheler, “Unwelcome Prayers,”&nbsp;<em>U.S. News &amp; World Report</em>, 9/20/99. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:4">Thomas Friedman, “The Real War,”&nbsp;<em>New York Times</em>, November, 27, 2001. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:5">Ibid. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:6">Tacitus, <em>Annals</em>, xv. 44. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:7">2 Tim. 4:6. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:7">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
</aside>
</div>

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title: Atheist Bradley Monton Defends Intelligent Design
topic: Science
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 09/25/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/atheist-bradley-monton-defends-intelligent-design
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Though philosopher Bradley Monton does not believe God exists, in a book titled <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Seeking-God-Science-Atheist-Intelligent/dp/1551118637/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1380067800&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=seeking+god+in+science" target="_blank">Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design</a></em>, he opens with this:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>This book is not providing a full-fledged endorsement of intelligent design. But intelligent design needs to be taken more seriously than a lot of its opponents are willing to.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>In an <a href="http://salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo26-science-faith/beyond-belief.php" target="_blank">interview</a> in Salvo magazine, Monton explains why he takes Intelligent Design seriously, even as an atheist:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>ID investigations are part of a long tradition in philosophy called Natural Theology—of looking for evidence in the natural world for the existence of God. Intelligent design has <em>prima facie</em> merit in being part of this long philosophical and scientific tradition. That’s one reason why I think it should be taken seriously. The other is that I find the arguments of the opponents of ID too emotionally driven and not as intellectually robust as one would hope. I get upset with my fellow atheists who present bad arguments against intelligent design and then expect everyone to believe that they have somehow resolved the debate with these bad arguments.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>When asked about the weaknesses of ID, Monton corrects the commonly-believed idea that ID can’t lead to testable predictions:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>At one time, I would have said that the greatest weakness [of ID] was the failure of ID proponents to put a theory on the table that makes testable predictions, but that all changed with Jonathan Wells’s book <em>The Myth of Junk DNA</em>. In it, Wells predicted that this purported junk DNA—these stretches of DNA in our genome that many scientists had claimed were useless—would be purposeful for the structure of human biology. Well, within the past year or so, empirical investigation has confirmed that there is in fact much less junk DNA than scientists had previously thought. It’s just a great example of a testable prediction that was made by a proponent of intelligent design that turned out to be successful.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>You can read the full interview in <a href="http://salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo26-science-faith/beyond-belief.php" target="_blank">Salvo</a>, and see more about “<a href="https://www.str.org/blog/how-to-test-for-intelligent-design#.W6maABNKijQ" target="_blank">How to Test for Intelligent Design</a>.”</p>

<p>(HT: <a href="https://twitter.com/jwarnerwallace/status/382499716573167616" target="_blank">@jwarnerwallace</a>)</p>
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title: A Surprising Tactic
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Greg Koukl
date: 08/28/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/a-surprising-tactic
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>I want to let you in on a little epiphany, a moment of revelation I had while prepping for my national radio debate with atheist and Skeptic magazine founder, Michael Shermer.</em></p>

<p>I had an insight when I was preparing to debate Michael Shermer on Hugh Hewitt’s national radio program. (<a href="http://www.str.org/articles/greg-koukl-and-michael-shermer-at-the-end-of-the-decade-of-the-new-atheists#.Uh47jxbtXF8" target="_blank">transcript here</a>) Here’s the “inspired”&nbsp;insight: Sometimes it’s better to move towards an objection rather than away from it, to embrace a charge, rather than run from it.</p>

<p>I was first exposed to this maneuver in a movie. In the opening scenes of “Clear and Present Danger,”&nbsp;a man with connections to the president was found dead in what appeared to be a drug deal gone bad. To contain the PR damage, the president’s advisers suggested he immediately downplay the relationship and distance himself from the problem.</p>

<p>Analyst Jack Ryan (played by Harrison Ford) suggested just the opposite. “If they ask if you were friends,”&nbsp;he counseled, “say, ’No, he was a good friend.’&nbsp;If they ask if he was a good friend, say ’We were lifelong friends.’&nbsp;It would give them no place to go. Nothing to report. No story.”</p>

<p>In other words, don’t run from the problem; run towards it and defuse it. Don’t evade; invade. Embrace it, undermine its relevance, and take the wind out of its sails.</p>

<p>In certain situations we face, that’s good advice. For example, I fully expected Shermer to fire off the atheist’s standard response to evidence for intelligent design: “If you argue for ID, then you’re going to have to deal with the problem of imperfect design.”&nbsp;In other words, if God designed living organisms, their design would be perfect. Clearly there are flaws, however. Therefore, there was no designer.</p>

<p>If that point came up, I planned to follow Ryan’s recommendation. I’d say “Michael, you’re absolutely right. If I’m going to argue for an intelligent designer, then I am going to have to deal with that problem. But you’re not going to get off that easily. One anomaly doesn’t nullify the overwhelming evidence for design. That would be like denying a wristwatch was designed because it ran three minutes slow. You’re straining at a gnat, but swallowing a camel.”</p>

<p>This challenge to ID isn’t really an argument against the evidence for design. It’s a distraction from that evidence. By moving toward the challenge, I’d blunt the objection by telegraphing to the radio audience I was aware of the difficulty and wasn’t shaken by it. Shermer would have “no place to go. Nothing to report. No story.”</p>

<p>As it turned out, that issue didn’t come up, but something like it did. Shermer pointed out that if the Bible is a guide to morality, then I’d have to pick and choose which biblical commands to embrace. My response: “You’re absolutely right, Michael.”</p>

<p>Yes, I explained, I would have to do the hard work of sorting the rules out. But that’s true of every ethical system, even his. I faced no bigger challenge than he did with his “objective”&nbsp;evolutionary morality. I agreed with the problem, then denied its significance.</p>

<p>I’ve heard Christians stumped when atheists charged, “There are lots of gods you don’t believe in, too: Zeus, Jupiter, Thor, etc. We atheists just believe in one less god than you.”</p>

<p>It turns out the atheist is exactly right on this point, but it does him no good. Believing in one less god than a theist is exactly what distinguishes atheists from monotheists. Nothing meaningful follows from this observation. The flummoxed Christian could have simply said, “Yes, you’re right. You do. And what follows from that?,”&nbsp;then watch the challenge fizzle.</p>

<p>In the future, I plan to take this tack more often. Maybe it would be a good move for you, too. They say, “This is a problem,”&nbsp;and instead of backpedaling, we move towards it and embrace it. “Yes,”&nbsp;we admit, “that is an issue, but it’s not ultimately relevant, decisive, or damaging when you see it in perspective and consider the evidence.”</p>

<p>When a naysayer raises an objection, it is meant to push us off balance and put us on the ropes in a defensive position. In some cases, stepping forward instead of backwards changes that dynamic and the objection goes dead in the water.</p>
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title: Worldviews and Reality
topic: Philosophy
author: Greg Koukl
date: 09/27/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/worldviews-and-reality
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Bad worldviews, even if deeply believed, cannot undo reality. God has given every human being the ability to know truth about his world. Reality, then, becomes our ally, even with postmoderns.</em></p>

<p>I have fielded some questions lately about whether a person with a modern worldview (STR types, presumably) can really connect with people in an emerging, postmodern culture.</p>

<p>This also may be a concern of yours. I don’t think it’s anything you should lose any sleep over, though. Here’s why.</p>

<p>First, I don’t think my worldview is “modern,”&nbsp;though I know this is a favorite challenge of postmoderns. Yes, I believe in the legitimacy of reason, but this doesn’t make me a modern simply because the Enlightenment period exalted reason to idol status.</p>

<p>Pre-moderns of all stripes—including medievals and ancients—trusted reason not because it was a pop idol, but because it was an undeniable feature of reality. I cannot properly be called a modernist simply because I follow in their example, and I would vigorously resist that label because it is often an attempt to simply dismiss anything I might say.</p>

<p>Second, I realize that the prevailing worldview among young people is a kind of knee-jerk postmodern relativism. They are very skeptical about truth claims and the kind of “rationality”&nbsp;that moderns have used to justify views that have led to oppression. But that is only a part of the story, the small part.</p>

<p>There is something else that is almost always missed with challenges like this one. Bad worldviews, even if deeply believed, cannot undo reality. God has given every human being the ability to know truth about his world. Reality, then, becomes our ally, even with postmoderns.</p>

<p>Our convictions as Christians include that God exists, that this is His world, and that man is made in His image. If we are right, then reality turns out to be structured in a very specific way and no skeptic can escape it. That’s the rest of the story.</p>

<p>Unless a person is truly pathological, his language and his behavior will always betray his deepest beliefs about the world.</p>

<p>Sure, emotions, prejudice, and bull-headedness may cause him to deny what would otherwise be obvious except when he is defending his ideological turf. But when his guard is down, every person understands that the basic structure of the world is the way the Bible says it is, at least in the broad strokes. Simply put, reason and rationality still matter, even to the postmodernist, regardless of his claims to the contrary.</p>

<p>Recent studies, along with my personal experience at STR, bear this out. For example, sociologist Christian Smith in his book Soul Searching reveals that one of the primary reasons students abandon their Christian convictions is because of “some version of intellectual skepticism or disbelief.”&nbsp;Some typical responses: “It didn’t make any sense anymore,”&nbsp;“Some stuff is too far-fetched for me to believe,”&nbsp;“I think scientifically and there is no real proof,”&nbsp;and, “Too many questions that can’t be answered.”</p>

<p>Here’s another bit of evidence. The best-selling “new”&nbsp;atheists are not postmodernists telling their stories. They are Enlightenment moderns giving arguments for atheism. And they’re selling millions of books, as did Dan Brown (remember The Da Vinci Code?) with even greater success.</p>

<p>There is no good reason, then, to think that appeals to careful thinking will fall on deaf ears in an allegedly postmodern era, especially if we are alert to the prevailing sensitivities in the way we make our case. Unjustified dogmatism is out, for example. Lecturing is out. Head banging is out.</p>

<p>I think, though, that the tactical approach as part of the kind of ambassador model we promote at Stand to Reason is just the kind of thing to catch someone’s interest—regardless of their generation—if they are fair-minded.</p>
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title: The Second Story
topic: Philosophy
author: Melinda Penner
date: 09/18/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-second-story
content:
            <div> 
		<p>As I listen to many of the subjects in debate today in our culture—the dialogue between secularists and Christians—there’s a fundamental difference in perspectives that I think we need to be aware of if we’re going to try to be persuasive. Faith and religion have been relegated to the realm of wishful thinking and personal preference. For many we’re talking with and in the public discourse, it has nothing to do with reality. Religion is a personal taste, like ice cream, so it’s bizarre to them that we’re trying to get them to like the same flavor we like.</p>

<p>This is a dynamic going on when we discuss same-sex marriage, abortion, and mandated health care that covers contraceptives. Unfortunately, it’s a perspective that is expressed in the recent Supereme Court ruling on same-sex marriage—Justice Kennedy said there is no rational argument against it and opposition can only be motivated by bigotry and discrimination. He heard the rational, legal arguments presented in court and didn’t even recognize them as such. Hobby Lobby’s conscientious objection to providing contraceptives through their health insurance is met with a response that relegates their conscience to the private realm, which has no place in their business world. The same thing was said in the recent New Mexico case finding that a photographer’s conscience was her private belief, but should not be practiced in her business.</p>

<p>We can believe what we wish in church and at home, but the “neutral public square”&nbsp;mandates we keep it private. Of course, it’s a bizarre understanding of conscience. Our consciences are neatly divided between private and public life. The point of freedom of religion is practice throughout our lives. More and more we’re hearing the First Amendment interpreted as the right to believe as we wish, but not practice as we believe. It’s the freedom of belief, not the freedom of exercise our belief.</p>

<p>Brett writes about this shift in the definition of faith <a href="http://www.str.org/articles/is-faith-a-blind-leap#.UjM_mhbtXF8" target="_blank">here</a>. Greg talked about this dynamic in the New Mexico case in a recent <a href="http://www.str.org/podcasts/weekly-audio/same-sex-marriage-and-freedom-of-conscience-august-27-2013#.UjNCYBbtXF8" target="_blank">podcast</a>.</p>

<p>Francis Schaeffer wrote a fabulously insightful little book decades ago called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Reason-Classics-Francis-Schaeffer/dp/0830834052/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1379091157&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=escape+from+reason" target="_blank"><em>Escape from Reason</em></a>. It’s one of the first apologetics books I read (a very long time ago). He wrote about a trend he observed taking place, and it is even more relevant today to understand some of the background assumptions going on in public discourse. I highly recommend you read it to be more effective in unraveling disagreements with secularists and making a persuasive case.</p>

<p>Schaeffer describes the affect the Enlightenment has had on modern thinking. Rationalism divided truth into objective and subjective and put religion and values in the subjective category. Schaeffer describes the world of facts, reality, as the first story in a building. It’s bolted to the ground. Religion and values got sent upstairs to the second floor. It’s the place for subjective belief, preferential tastes, mere desire. It doesn’t belong on the first floor with reality. We all live together on the first floor of the real world, and when we practice our religion we get sent upstairs.</p>

<p>This is the view most people have about religion these days. Even many religious people themselves put religion upstairs and separate it from facts and reality. When we talk about our convictions, even if we give rational reasons, others see us trying to barge downstairs into the real world. We, of course, are talking about reality on the first floor when we talk about Christian convictions and values. And that’s the huge worldview divide that is in the way of most conversations about values and religion.</p>

<p>As Christian ambassadors, we need to understand this dynamic and help people understand that we’re not taking a leap of faith from the second floor. We’re living on the ground level where our convictions and values belong because they are reality.</p>
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title: Blaise Pascal: Biography
topic: History
author: Melinda Penner
date: 09/12/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/blaise-pascal-biography
content:
            <div> 
		<p><a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/in-and-out-in-a-blaise-of-glory" target="_blank">David Mathis describes</a> Pascal:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>His is one of the great minds of Western civilization—indeed, the history of the world. He was a child prodigy and first a mathematician and physicist, then a philosopher and theologian...Because he refused to swallow Descartes’s pill of naively applying the scientific method to every discipline, Pascal’s seventeenth-century writings prove hauntingly relevant today in a postmodern milieu in which more and more are awakening from the Enlightenment’s folly.</p>

<p>It was November 23, 1654. He was 31 years old. For two hours, from about 10:30 PM until 12:30 AM, he experienced a kind of spiritual inferno. He journaled the experience on a piece of a paper he sewed into his coat to keep near his heart.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/in-and-out-in-a-blaise-of-glory" target="_blank">Read more</a> about this brilliant Christian.</p>
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title: How I Measure Success
topic: Christian Living
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 09/10/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/how-i-measure-success
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for September 2013</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>“How do you stay positive when change seems impossible?”&nbsp;My wife’s question caught me off guard. I had just returned from working in Beirut, Lebanon, training Egyptian Christians in theology and apologetics. Although my training and overall trip went great, I shared with her a story that troubled me.</p>

<p>I felt significant opposition when I taught on abortion. Although Egyptian Christians are pro-life, it’s difficult for them to oppose abortion in the instance of rape for two reasons. One, women who are raped are often blamed for the incident. They are harassed and, in extreme cases, murdered for shaming their family. Two, adoption is not allowed in Egypt because Islam forbids it.</p>

<p>This results in a dilemma. If a woman is raped and gets pregnant, she can have an abortion, but this means killing her unborn child. Or she can decide to carry the child to term, but she risks losing her life—and the life of her unborn child. Plus, she can’t place her child for adoption. Both she and her child will be ostracized for life.</p>

<p>The solution is to either change Egyptian law to allow adoption or change Egyptian mentality to nurture raped women. Neither option is plausible. This left my wife wondering how I remain positive. Let me tell you what I told her.</p>

<p>The key is to know how to measure success. I don’t determine success on results, but on faithfulness. Here’s what I mean.</p>

<p>If I were to measure my success merely on results (minds changed, souls saved, abortion made illegal, etc.), then I would become discouraged. Certainly, I can identify individual “victories”&nbsp;where I’ve changed minds on abortion, convinced people that God exists, or led people to Christ. But overall I’ve “failed”&nbsp;more times than I’ve succeeded to achieve those kinds of results.</p>

<p>Perhaps you would say the same about yourself. Does that make us failures? Not at all. We’re not evaluated on the results: convicting hearts, changing minds, or saving souls. That’s God’s job.</p>

<p>Our measure of success is different. We’re to be faithful ambassadors for Christ. We should strive to be effective communicators of the truth. That’s how I measure success. Did I articulate God’s message in a clear and winsome way? Was I honest, persuasive, and gracious? If so, then I succeeded. Since my role is different than God’s, how I measure success is different, too.</p>

<p>When I was teaching the Egyptians about abortion, I explained to them that abortion—even in the case of rape—was not justified. Although it was difficult for them to accept this, it was not because the pro-life view was morally mistaken. The problem was Egyptian culture. They don’t allow adoption and don’t care for women who are raped.</p>

<p>My solution? Change the culture. Even as the words came out of my mouth, I was laughing in my mind. <em>Yeah, sure...change 1400 years of Islamic culture. Who am I kidding?</em> Did it sound like an impossible task? Yes. But it didn’t make the imperative to be salt and light any less urgent.</p>

<p>I told them I, too, face insurmountable odds back in the United States. For example, I’m committed to end the injustice of abortion. That’s an institution that’s been legally entrenched in U.S. law for over 40 years. It’s a right many Americans expect. Who am I to think I’ll change the culture on this issue? If I only focused on the result, I’d get discouraged. Instead, I focus on being faithful, which is all God asks of me. I leave the results up to Him.</p>

<p>Whether my Egyptian students make adoption legal or whether I make abortion illegal isn’t how success is measured. Certainly, it would be good news if either occurred. Ambassadors of Christ, however, are measured by their faithfulness to do their part, no matter the odds, no matter the outcome.</p>

<p>That’s why I’m grateful for you. Even though in previous newsletters I’ve pointed you to many examples where exciting results have taken place, you know that we’re achieving more success in the thousands of ambassadors we’re training to be effective communicators of God’s message. And God will use their faithfulness.</p>

<p>Being salt and light,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
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title: Worldviews and Public Policy
topic: Christian Living
author: Melinda Penner
date: 09/25/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/worldviews-and-public-policy
content:
            <div> 
		<p><a href="http://www.pearceyreport.com/archives/2013/07/nancy_pearcey_transgender_politics_vs_facts_of_life.php" target="_blank">Nancy Pearcey</a> has a really great article explaining a strategy for more effective conversations and public dialogue over controversial issues. In this case, she writes about sexual identity and transgender politics.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Every law has an implicit worldview, a set of assumptions that justifies it. The worldview implicit in the transgender movement is that our physical bodies have no particular value—that our biology is irrelevant to who we are as persons...</p>

<p>The law is being used to impose a worldview that denigrates the physical body as inconsequential to personal identity. It is a worldview that drives a wedge between one’s body and one’s sense of self, which exerts a self-alienating, fragmenting effect on the human personality.</p>

<p>The transgender movement is a stepping stone to a completely postmodern conception of psychosexual identity. What does that mean? A psychotherapist explains in these words: People “don’t want to fit into any boxes—not gay, straight, lesbian, or bisexual ones...they want to be free to change their minds.”</p>

<p>Instead we are moving to a postmodern view that gender is something we can choose, independent of biology—and thus something we can also change...</p>

<p>The autonomous self will not tolerate having its options limited by anything it did not choose—not even its own body...</p>

<p>The liberal world does not know for sure what a man or woman is...</p>

<p>Because every law presupposes a worldview, the most effective way to address the law is to show the negative impact of the underlying worldview. For the law to be humane, it must reflect a view of the person that is holistic, integrating gender identity with the biological facts of life.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Nancy writes about how to show the positive and holistic view of being human that the Bible teaches. Before jumping into the morality the Bible teaches, it’s more effective to start at the foundation of people’s values, their worldview. Show how their worldview fails and then show how the Bible provides the best guide for how we are made.</p>

<p>She goes into much more detail on the affects of worldview in her excellent book <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Leonardo-Secular-Assault-Meaning/dp/1433669277/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1379980891&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=saving+leonardo" target="_blank">Saving Leonardo</a></em>. It’s really essential reading.</p>
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title: Do Atheists Lack Belief in God?
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Greg Koukl
date: 08/21/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/do-atheists-lack-belief-in-god-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Some atheists think they escape the burden of proof by claiming they lack belief rather than have a belief there is no God. Yes, there is a difference between non-belief and unbelief, but there is no refuge here for the atheist.</em></p>

<p>Atheists no longer believe there is no God, apparently. Instead, they merely lack belief in the divine. They are not un-believers. They are simply non-believers. And non-belief is not a claim, so it requires no defense.</p>

<p>This, atheists think, makes their job easier by relieving them of any responsibility to provide evidence for their view, er...their non-view. After all, no one is obliged to give evidence for the non-existence of fairies. Thus, atheism secures the inside lane as the default view for reasonable people. Or so atheists claim.</p>

<p>If I were an atheist, I would never take this route. I’d fear people would think I was cheating with words, betraying weakness, not strength. This, as it turns out, is exactly what’s happening. Yes, there is a difference between non-belief and unbelief, but there is no refuge here for the atheist.</p>

<p>For example, if you asked me which rugby team was the best in England, I wouldn’t know where to start. Since I have no interest in the question and no information on the issue, I cannot form a belief one way or another. Because I have no beliefs about the quality of rugby competition in the U.K., I am truly a non-believer regarding the question. I am neutral.</p>

<p>This is not the case with atheists. It’s true, atheists have no belief in God, but they are not neutral on this question. If they were, they wouldn’t be writing books or accepting invitations for debates. No one debates about non-beliefs. There would be nothing to talk about.</p>

<p>For an atheist to enter a debate, he has to take a position. If he takes a position, he asserts a belief. And when he asserts a belief, he makes a claim. When he advances an argument, presumably he believes the conclusion that flows from his own reasoning. Theists say there is a God, and atheists argue they are wrong. This is not neutrality.</p>

<p>To say you do not believe in God is very different from saying you lack belief about God. Anyone who has a point of view has a belief. And atheists have a point of view. This makes them believers of a very particular stripe: They believe God does not exist.</p>

<p>There’s another problem, though, that apparently has escaped the notice of those atheists who claim the high road of reason as their own. Given any point of view (e.g., “God exists”), there are only three possible responses to it. You can affirm it (“God does exist”), you can deny it (“God does not exist”), or you can withhold judgment (“I don’t know”), either for lack of information or lack of interest.</p>

<p>In the God debate, the first is called a theist (of some sort), the second an atheist, and the third an agnostic. The alleged non-believers in question here are neither theistic nor agnostic. Only one logical option remains: They deny God exists, which is why they are called atheists. An atheist (a = not, theist = regarding God) is a person who holds there is not a God. That is an active claim, not a passive non-belief.</p>

<p>The only way out of this logical trilemma is to simply stand on the sidelines and not participate, either for lack of interest or for lack of information. However, neither apathy nor uncertainty seem to characterize those who say they “lack a belief in God.”</p>

<p>Now, whether or not atheists are obliged to offer evidence for their denial is a different question. This brings us back to fairies. Atheists are not neutral on the question of fairies, either. They deny their existence, as do I. In my view, though, neither of us is obliged to give evidence against fairies because no plausible evidence of any kind has ever been advanced for them, as far as I know.</p>

<p>That is not the case with God, however. Since 99% of the people in the world believe in God, then rejection of that which seems self-evident to virtually everyone on the planet requires some rationale, especially in light of the cogent arguments in favor of God’s existence.</p>

<p>The atheist’s unwillingness to step up to the plate on this smacks of intellectual dishonesty. Since they claim to be champions of reason (the “brights,”&nbsp;to use Daniel Dennett’s euphemism for his kind), then they ought to live according to its rules, it seems to me.</p>
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title: Give ’Em Heaven—Mentoring Letter October 2013
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 09/30/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/give-em-heaven-mentoring-letter-october-2013
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Are you giving a bit of Heaven to everyone you meet? Especially the people closest to you? Greg sets out a strategy to do just that.</em></p>

<p>“Give ’em Heaven.”&nbsp;That’s the way I close every broadcast. It’s good advice; that’s why I give it. Every time I do, though, I feel a tinge of guilt.</p>

<p>Is this something I do, I think to myself, or is it just a catchy slogan? Would others say this was true of me?</p>

<p>Sure, at public events I’m fine. But what about when there’s no professional motivation to put my best foot forward? What about with strangers I encounter? Or my friends and coworkers? Or my wife and children? Would they say they get a little bit of Heaven every time they get a little bit of me?</p>

<p>Sadly, I think not. Worse, the more intimate the relationship, the less Heaven in evidence, I’m afraid. Though it should be just the opposite, strangers get the best I have; those closest often get the scraps. Does this ever happen with you?</p>

<p>Paul said we should discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness (1 Tim. 4:7), so I’m setting about to improve my habits. Here’s what I’ve been doing to guarantee I bring more Heaven to my relationships. You might find my plan helpful for you, too. For three specific groups—strangers, friends, and family—I have three different Scripture passages to light my way.</p>

<p>First, for strangers. On a flight back from the east coast last week I sat in front of a two-year-old boy destined, I now believe, to become a soccer superstar. For five full hours he banged me in the back like Beckham. It’s understandable in a kid his age, for sure. But he was also a screecher, rattling the cabin repeatedly with piercing, long-winded wails. His parents, apparently inured to the howling, did nothing.</p>

<p>It was really hard for me to keep from saying something stupid. Fortunately, I’d programmed my “to do”&nbsp;list to daily remind me of Proverbs 20:3: “Keeping away from strife is an honor for a man, but any fool will quarrel.”</p>

<p>How did I give that family (and the obnoxious kid) Heaven? I kept my mouth shut. Others on the plane did not. Eventually a shouting match erupted between the father who was “proud of my kid”&nbsp;and a passenger overwhelmed by the constant outbursts. The wisdom of Solomon, though, saved me from acting the fool.</p>

<p>Second, friends. Ever been wounded by a curt reply or condescending statement? This next verse has helped me ignore slights I might otherwise have reacted to: “A man’s discretion makes him slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression”&nbsp;(Prov. 19:11).</p>

<p>When I’ve been snubbed or rebuffed—especially if I didn’t deserve it—the impulse to lash back in self defense is, for me, almost overwhelming. When I remind myself of this bit of wisdom, though (I have it memorized), it’s almost as if God is saying, “It’s okay Greg. If you let it slide, you’ll shine for Me.”&nbsp;As I let that truth sink in, my trepidation simply melts away.</p>

<p>Finally—and most importantly—family. Here’s my passage: “Do all things without grumbling or disputing so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world”&nbsp;(Phil. 2:14-15).</p>

<p>Ouch. Complaining is one of my biggest flaws, especially around the house. When I grumble and grouse in my home, though, I’m not giving my family Heaven. I’m giving them grief. And it’s particularly vexing to the crew when the hardship comes from the captain who should be navigating the storms with his head above the fray.</p>

<p>I now try to be especially alert to the first things I say to others when I get up in the morning and to my behavior in the first 30 minutes after I get home from a hard day’s work. My mouth and my manners will set the tone for everything that follows. Sow to the wind, I’ll reap the whirlwind (that’s in the Bible, too). Sow peace, though, and there’s a better chance of harvesting harmony.</p>

<p>Here’s a bonus verse: “Where there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, but he who restrains his lips is wise”&nbsp;(Prov. 10:19). This saying guarantees more Heaven in any circumstance.</p>

<p>Three groups of people, three verses, three lessons. If you like, find different verses of your own to suit your particular needs. Paul offers a good summary in Rom. 12:18: “If possible, as far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.”</p>

<p>A little discipline here will guarantee you’re actually giving ’em Heaven and not just talking about it. Practice these things and you’ll bring more Heaven to Earth. Ignore them and guarantee more trouble for you and those around you.</p>

<p>And be careful to save your best behavior for those you love the most.</p>

<p>“Give ’em Heaven”&nbsp;is at the heart of STR’s Ambassador approach, building you as a Christian so your message is not just credible, but compelling. Your generosity in giving makes that possible.</p>
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title: Natural Selection and Mutation
topic: Science
author: Melinda Penner
date: 10/01/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/natural-selection-and-mutation
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Someone brought this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOfRN0KihOU#t=230" target="_self">video</a> to our attention and asked what our response is. It’s a nicely made video, but the argument is so flawed the response seems simplistic.</p>

<p>The video purports to show how evolution explains where the variety of life comes from. The picture shows a variety of species, which is supposedly what is explained. But the explanation only shows us where the variety within a species comes from. Apparently we’re supposed to leap from the variation of finches to common descent. But the explanation doesn’t explain that.</p>

<p>The power of natural selection to explain the variety of life actually has little support, as <a href="http://www.discovery.org/a/2531" target="_blank">David Berlinski</a> points out here in his review of a study on natural selection:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[I]t comes as something of a surprise to learn that despite very long-standing claims by evolutionary biologists to have established the robust viability of natural selection as a biological force, the overwhelming number of such studies have been conducted only in the past fifteen years...</p>

<p>Considering the fundamental role of both linear and quadratic selection in population genetics and in popular accounts of Darwin’s theory, one of those “unresolved”&nbsp;issues may well be whether natural selection exists to any appreciable extent, and if it does, whether it plays any real role in biological change altogether.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>It’s surprising to me that the video relies on the Galapagos finches as proof because it’s been pointed out a multitude of times that the finches fall far short as proof of general evolution. <a href="http://www.discovery.org/a/3914" target="_blank">Dr. Phillip Johnson</a> explains:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The claim that evolutionary science has discovered and verified a mechanism which can account for the origin of biological information and complexity by involving only natural (unintelligent) causes is supported by an immense extrapolation from limited evidence of minor, cyclical variations in fundamentally stable species.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Natural selection is at work in nature, and mutations are, too. But the two provide only an explanation of variety in species, not the wide variety of many species.</p>
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title: Good Reasons to Say Grace in a Restaurant—Mentoring Letter August 2013
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 07/29/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/good-reasons-to-say-grace-in-a-restaurant-mentoring-letter-august-2013
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Greg explains how saying grace in a restaurant can be a good witness.</em></p>

<p>I always try to bow my head and give thanks over meals in restaurants, even when I’m alone. Sometimes, though, it creates awkward moments.</p>

<p>Often servers are oblivious to the prayer (I suspect this doesn’t happen for them that often). They return to the table and carry out their duties, refilling coffee or dropping off mustard, completely unaware of the significance of the moment.</p>

<p>I don’t make a fuss, of course. I just pause, smile, and wait until they’re finished before I finish.</p>

<p>Just a few weeks ago, something unique happened while I was at a Mexican restaurant with my wife and girls. As usual, we held hands, bowed our heads over enchiladas and chili rellenos, and prayed. Nothing fancy, just a specific, genuine expression of thanks from the heart.</p>

<p>When I lifted my head, I noticed our server waiting patiently—and politely—for us to finish. He then came closer, took a knee next to the table, and in broken English asked a question. Could I teach him to pray?</p>

<p>He told me he liked the idea of giving thanks with his own family over meals, but he was a little unsure of himself. Did I have any suggestions? I thanked him for his interest, offered some thoughts, and then passed on a word of encouragement.</p>

<p>It was a short conversation, but it reinforced for me the importance of appropriate gestures of public piety.</p>

<p>I have three specific reasons for saying grace in restaurants, none having anything to do with grandstanding, trying to look “religious,”&nbsp;or attempting to impress anyone with my spirituality. Here they are.</p>

<p>First, I want to express gratitude to God.</p>

<p>When Jesus dined—whether in private (Luke 22:19) or in public (John 6:11)—it was His practice to give thanks. Paul did the same, once “in the presence of all”&nbsp;before a shipload of nearly 300 prisoners, soldiers, and seamen—virtually all non-Christians (Acts 27:35).</p>

<p>It is right to be grateful to God for every good thing we receive from Him, including what we eat (1 Tim. 4:3-5). Giving thanks for any meal—even in the humblest circumstances with no one watching—is simply good manners towards God.</p>

<p>Sometimes people are watching, though, which brings me to the second reason I always try to say grace publicly in restaurants. I want to express gratitude to God before other people.</p>

<p>Though I’m not trying to show off, I do want people to know that I care about honoring God and that I don’t care if they see. I want them to know I am not uneasy about my love for the Lord, even in a culture where some might think it odd.</p>

<p>But isn’t it possible an onlooker might be offended? I don’t know why they should be. Furthermore, in all my years of praying in public, I’ve never had anyone object. Quite the contrary, many times people have come over to my table to tell me they approved and were even touched by the practice.</p>

<p>This brings me to my final reason for always saying grace publicly in restaurants: I want my simple act of devotion to have a beneficial effect on others.</p>

<p>Instead of thinking the worst of those around me, I assume my behavior might encourage them. I don’t expect to get many requests for a short tutorial on prayer, but I do hope my effort will get others thinking in a positive way.</p>

<p>Some of those who offer a compliment turn out to be believers who weren’t as bold themselves. My effort encouraged them to stand a little taller and be more concerned about honoring God rather than being anxious about the judgment of others.</p>

<p>Even with non-believers present, I’m willing to take the risk that they may not like what they see. Those who don’t share my convictions display their values publicly. Why should I, as a Christian, timidly shrink into the background?</p>

<p>I hope in the future you won’t miss opportunities like this. Non-Christians frequently zero in on the negatives of religion. Maybe your decision in this small area will give them something positive to consider.</p>
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