Friday, July 29, 2016

GOD DOESN'T DO THINGS MY WAY; THEREFORE, HE MUST BE WRONG!

GOD DOESN'T DO THINGS MY WAY; THEREFORE, HE MUST BE WRONG!

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       www.Mannsword.blogspot.com or my
       Facebook page: “Apologetics for Today.”
For more great blogs as this one go to Daniel’s blog site above.

A Letter to an Atheist:
I can appreciate your skepticism about God and His ways. In fact, if I were God, I certainly would have done things differently. However, over the years, I’ve had many occasions to reconsider assuming this weighty vocation.

For instance, we tend to think we know what’s ultimately good for us. Many think that hitting-the-Lotto equates with happiness. However, surveys have shown that, more often than not, it destroys the lives it touches.

I can also think of many examples from my own life. For decades, I had experienced the horror of severe depression and panic attacks. However, I now thankfully look back on what I endured and recognize that I needed these trainers.

Also, this lesson pertains to how many of us have regarded God’s way of salvation. You too write:
Reward lies solely with repentance and not at all whether you led a good and decent life. I just cannot accept this idea on faith.

Nevertheless, I think that there is wisdom in this, which we can only perceive as we progress further down the road. What if none of us are really good? Instead, we merely like to think that we are good, and this causes us to arrogantly look down on others and live in denial about our true nature. Would you disagree with me that if life enabled us to continue in our arrogance and denial that these would ruin any hope of real relationships?

You don’t have to be a Christian to recognize that denial, self-delusion, and self-righteousness are the real status of humanity. A multitude of experiments and surveys have revealed this very thing, although there have been some psychologists who have tried to justify our delusions by claiming that we need them in order to be able to function proactively.

Instead, if self-delusion is our reality, then counseling should be more confrontational than indulgent. It should attempt to break through the denial. However, such psychotherapists wouldn’t last long in their practice. They would loose all of their clients, who would seek other psychotherapists - those who would make them feel better about themselves.

However, life – God’s life – will not allow us to escape with ease. Life is painful. While we can escape the confrontational therapist, we can’t escape life, and life has a way of contradicting our illusions.
I’ve come to understand that a relationship with God is like having a relationship with life and with others. If someone spreads around malicious stories about me, it will not matter how many nice things they might say to my face or even how many times they might shower me with gifts.

Instead, in order to repair the relationship, the problem must be addressed at its core. The offender would have to humble himself to confess and repent of his wrongdoing. (I would even insist that he also attempt to make reparations by openly confessing his lies about me.) Nothing can be more healing for a relationship! If the offender refuses to repent, then there is no hope for restoration.

The Pharisees had been good and righteous people, at least, that’s the way they had been perceived. They were zealous to perform the good deeds of the law, and everyone held them in high esteem. Even the Jewish people of today regard them as worthy of God. However, these same people were in denial about their true spiritual status (Luke 16:15). They were self-righteous (Matthew 23) and looked down on others (Luke 18:9). These were the very same people who hated the light of God (John 3:19-20) and sought to put to death the Source of that light.

A relationship with God must address our problem at its root – our sins and rebellion against the truth. Anything else is superficial. Meaningful relationship must start with renewal of our attitudes and heart’s desires. If I found out that my wife loved me because I reminded her of her first flame, this would seriously undermine whatever we had enjoyed together.

There are many other areas – areas that you have mentioned – where it seems that God has taken a wrong path. We think of the problems of suffering, of hell, and of the exclusivity of Christ, among others. While for some, these represents knock-out punches, for those who know and love Him, these are no more than areas that give birth to questions, albeit uncomfortable ones.
In short, I have come to find the wisdom of God in areas where, previously, I could find little rationale. However, if He is truly the Creator, then we shouldn’t be surprised by our perplexity.


--LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR

Our Daily Bread -- Love Your Neighbor
Read: Romans 13:8-11
Bible in a Year: Psalms 49-50; Romans 1
For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” —Galatians 5:14
An anthropologist was winding up several months of research in a small village, the story is told. While waiting for a ride to the airport for his return flight home, he decided to pass the time by making up a game for some children. His idea was to create a race for a basket of fruit and candy that he placed near a tree. But when he gave the signal to run, no one made a dash for the finish line. Instead the children joined hands and ran together to the tree.
When asked why they chose to run as a group rather than each racing for the prize, a little girl spoke up and said: “How could one of us be happy when all of the others are sad?” Because these children cared about each other, they wanted all to share the basket of fruit and candy.
After years of studying the law of Moses, the apostle Paul found that all of God’s laws could be summed up in one: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:14; see also Rom. 13:9). In Christ, Paul saw not only the reason to encourage, comfort, and care for one another but also the spiritual enablement to do it.
Because He cares for us, we care for each other. —Mart DeHaan
Father, thank You for the love You shower on us day by day. Teach us, in turn, to care for others. Open our eyes to see their need and respond as You want us to.
We show our love for God when we love one another. 

INSIGHT: Paul’s words in today’s passage remind us of Jesus’s words to the young teacher of the law who asked what he needed to do to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:25-29). Love for God and neighbor is the fulfillment of all the laws of the Old Testament. In Luke, Jesus defines who our neighbor is and what love for that person should look like (vv. 30-37). Paul provides thoughts about this to the people at the church in Rome. After telling them to love their neighbor in chapter 13, he goes on to tell them in chapter 14 to consider the effect their actions will have on their neighbor. Love is to guide everything we do. . J.R. Hudberg

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--BEST FRIEND--FOREVER

Our Daily Bread -- Best Friend—Forever
Read: James 2:18-26
Bible in a Year: Psalms 46-48; Acts 28
“Abraham believed God . . . ,” and he was called God’s friend. —James 2:23
One of the pieces of wisdom I have come to appreciate is my dad’s often-repeated statement, “Joe, good friends are one of life’s greatest treasures.” How true! With good friends, you are never alone. They’re attentive to your needs and gladly share life’s joys and burdens.
Before Jesus came to earth, only two individuals were called friends of God. The Lord spoke to Moses “as one speaks to a friend” (Ex. 33:11), and Abraham “was called God’s friend” (James 2:23; see 2 Chron. 20:7; Isa. 41:8).
I am amazed that Jesus calls those of us who belong to Him friends: “I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). And His friendship is so deep that He laid down His life for us. John says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (v. 13).
What a privilege and blessing to have Jesus as our friend! He is a friend who will never leave us or forsake us. He intercedes for us before the Father and supplies all our needs. He forgives all our sins, understands all our sorrows, and gives us sufficient grace in times of trouble. He is indeed our best friend! —Joe Stowell
Lord, I am thankful that You have called me Your friend. May I ever be grateful for the privilege!
What a friend we have in Jesus.

INSIGHT: In the ancient Roman hierarchy, to be a “friend of Caesar” meant having a close relationship with the highest seat of power. Such “friends” knew the emperor so well that they actually opened his mail and carried on his correspondence. They also showed a willingness to serve the emperor as he directed. So it is for the follower of Christ today. The Lord Jesus has called us “friends” (John 15:15). He has let us in on His intimacy with His Father and wants us to share His message of love with others. To be the friend of Jesus is to be in relationship with the highest seat of power (Phil. 2:5-11). Dennis Fisher


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Wednesday, July 27, 2016

MATERIALISM, ATHEISM, AND THE DENIAL OF FREEWILL


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       www.Mannsword.blogspot.com or my
       Facebook page: “Apologetics for Today.”

By His Mercies Alone, Daniel
For more great blogs as this one go to Daniel’s blog site above.

Materialism, Atheism, and the Denial of Freewill

If we start with an impoverished worldview – one that can’t embrace all of the nuances of reality – it means that we have a faulty worldview and that our conclusions will be skewed.

The atheist starts out with the presupposition or worldview that there is no spiritual reality, just matter and energy – what you see is what you get. Accordingly, thinking and choosing must also exclusively be a matter of chemical-electrical activity.

This understanding leaves little or no room for freewill. Consequently, there is no basis for any thought, choice or decision somewhat independent of our steady stream of chemical reactions. Every thought and decision is therefore the result of prior brain chemistry.

Even as far back as 1871, Thomas Huxley, a zealous advocate of Charles Darwin, advocated for this position:

Mind is a function of [just] matter, when that matter has attained a certain degree of organization.

Similarly, in his new book, “Free Will,” atheist Sam Harris writes, “Free will is an illusion.” What feels like freewill is nothing more than chemical processes.

With such an impoverished worldview, counter-factual and counter-intuitive conclusions quickly multiply. Here are several:

A denial of freewill goes against everything we intuitively know about ourselves and our lives. When I make any decision, like flipping through the TV channels, it seems that I am freely choosing one station over another. Of course, like anyone else, I am subject to powerful biological-genetic forces. Admittedly, I am biologically predisposed to not like loud and glitzy programming. Therefore, some will say, “Well, this proves you’re pre-programmed to make certain choices.”

Although there is truth in this claim, it falls far short of proving that pre-programming is the only factor involved in my choices.

Of course, Harris and the other atheists will respond, “Your experience of free choice is just an illusion.” However, if something that I experience with such clarity is illusory, perhaps my own existence and the existence of this world are also illusory. Perhaps I’m just someone else’s consciousness. Perhaps, as some Buddhists claim, we are just part of one universal consciousness and lack any individual existence.

However, if our intuitions and perceptions are simply part of this great delusion, then science and all reason are also part of this same delusion, along with Harris’ thinking. If our thinking and perceiving are illusory, so too are Harris’ challenge and the entirety of his book.

The extent of freewill differs among people. The heroin addict is more constrained in his free choices than before he became addicted. Christians report that, in Christ, they have come to enjoy a greater measure of freedom. They are not as constrained by their psychological needs for approval and success as they had been. If these observations of relative freedom are true, then the narrow, unvarying materialistic view of the atheists is invalidated. From their view, everyone is equally and completely controlled by brain chemistry. Consequently, there can be no room for varying degrees of freewill – the very thing we find!

We can perceive a distinction between purely chemical determination of our behavior and our relatively free responses. Wilder Penfield, the father of modern neurosurgery performed experiments demonstrating that brain activity doesn’t seem to account for all of our mental experience. Lee Edward Travis sums up his findings this way:

Penfield would stimulate electrically the proper motor cortex of conscious patients and challenge them to keep one hand from moving when the current was applied. The patient would seize this hand with the other hand and struggle to hold it still. Thus one hand under the control of the electrical current and the other hand under the control of the patient’s mind fought against each other. Penfield risked the explanation that the patient had not only a physical brain that was stimulated to action but also a nonphysical reality that interacted with the brain. (The Mysterious Matter of the Mind, 95-96)

There appears to be a distinction between brain chemistry and a nonphysical reality – the home of freewill. J.P. Moreland commented on another interesting aspect of Penfield’s findings:

No matter how much Penfield probed the cerebral cortex, he said, “There is no place…where electrical stimulation will cause a patient to believe or to decide.” (The Case for the Creator, Lee Strobel, 258)

If our mind is no more than a physical brain, then we should expect that electrical charges could stimulate every kind of response. However, this isn’t the case. It seems that our choices and beliefs cannot be entirely accounted for by the physical brain. Meanwhile,
atheism bases its non-freewill claim on the “observations” that everything is material. However, this does not seem to be the complete story.

There seems to be a nonphysical basis for thinking. Strobel writes:

In their journal article, Sam Parnia and Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, describe their study of sixty-three heart attack victims who were declared clinically dead but were later revived and interviewed. About ten percent reported having well-structured, lucid thought processes, with memory formation and reasoning, during the time that their brains were not functioning. The effects of oxygen starvation or drugs – objections commonly offered by skeptics – were ruled out as factors. (Strobel, 251)

This contradicts the atheistic narrative that thinking and choosing depend exclusively upon brain activity. In order to maintain their narrow materialistic worldview, the atheist is forced to discount this kind of study along with the many accounts of extra-body experiences.

If our brain chemistry compels all of our choices, then we cannot truly be culpable and responsible moral agents. This idea is humanly demeaning. This is very significant because it will affect how we view ourselves, our fellow humans and also how we treat them. If humans are no more than sophisticated chemical machines, there is a greater likelihood that we will use them like machines.

The atheist might agree that their view of freewill seriously compromises our estimation of humanity. However, he often retorts, “I’m more interested in truth than in what feels good.”

However, the denial of freewill goes far beyond the question of a lower estimation of humanity. This denial undermines everything upon which civilization is based – justice, right and wrong, reward and punishment.

If biology alone made the rapist rape, then it is not just to punish him. After all, he could make no other choice. Consequently, no punishment is just and no reward is deserved. It’s just a matter of chemistry not morality.

These ideas mean the destruction of civilization, and the atheists recognize this. Consequently, they are scrambling to resurrect the concept of moral responsibility, which they have undermined. Professor of Philosophy, Chad Meister, writes about Harris’s muddled scrambling:

While in Harris’s view we lack free will and moral culpability for our actions, he nonetheless believes that we can still be “blameworthy” for our actions. How so? “Because,” he says, “what we do subsequent to conscious planning tends to most fully reflect the global properties of the our minds” (Christian Research Journal, Volume 35, Number 4, 59)

Oddly, Harris claims that we can be “blameworthy” without being morally culpable. This is a blatant contradiction. If our “conscious planning” and what we do subsequently are strictly the products of brain chemistry, then there still can be no basis for either “blameworthiness” or moral culpability. They die a common death with the denial of freewill.

Some atheists are candid enough to admit that this is a real problem for their worldview. However, they continue to bring charges against the burglar who tore up their apartment. In this, their actions contradict their worldview. While they seek justice, they admit that they lack any possible basis for this concept in their pre-determined chemical world.

The denial of freewill seems to also constitute a denial of any meaningful thought. All brain chemistry is subject to the laws of nature. Consequently, all thinking and choosing are the result of formulas. However, formulas and laws produce repeated and predictable patterns, not information, not the nuances of thought. Clearly, the books that we write and the discoveries that we make don’t reflect repeated, formulaic. Instead, these creations reflect something greater – reasoning, the weighing of evidence for and against various paradigms. All of this requires something beyond what chemistry can offer. It requires the subtle and gloriously nuanced ability to freely choose among various thoughts and ideas.

Why are people atheists? Why do we trap ourselves in narrow boxes, which effectively obstruct our vision? One atheist friend explained to me the great relief he had experienced once he adopted the no-freewill position. He was no longer responsible for his behavior, and his sense of guilt became greatly diminished. He is what he is. Who can blame him!

While I can sympathize with this, Christ offers another way – a way to not only diminish guilt but to obliterate it. Besides, Christ obliterates our guilt in a way that doesn’t infringe upon moral responsibility. He replaces gratitude for guilt, gladness in service for gutless, going-with-the-flow biological determinism.

When a worldview fails to work, when it can’t be coherently lived out, we should be free to discard or modify it. This represents sanity, but sanity has no place within biological determinism.



VISIBLE VULNERABILITY

Our Daily Bread -- Visible Vulnerability
Be patient, bearing with one another in love. —Ephesians 4:2
As I ventured out several weeks after shoulder surgery, I was fearful. I had become comfortable using my arm sling, but both my surgeon and physical therapist now told me to stop wearing it. That’s when I saw this statement: “At this stage, sling wear is discouraged except as a visible sign of vulnerability in an uncontrolled environment.”
Ah, that was it! I feared the enthusiastic person who might give me a bear hug or the unaware friend who might bump me accidentally. I was hiding behind my flimsy baby-blue sling because I feared being hurt.
Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable can be scary. We want to be loved and accepted for who we are, but we fear that if people truly knew us, they would reject us and we could get hurt. What if they found out we are not smart enough . . . kind enough . . . good enough?
But as members of God’s family, we have a responsibility to help each other grow in faith. We’re told to “encourage one another,” to “build each other up” (1 Thess. 5:11), and to “be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Eph. 4:2).
When we are honest and vulnerable with other believers, we may discover we have mutual struggles battling temptation or learning how to live obediently. But most of all, we will share the wonder of God’s gift of grace in our lives. —Cindy Hess Kasper
Dear Lord, many times my fear of being hurt keeps me from being honest about my struggles. Help me to remember how much You love me, and help me to be patient and loving with others.
Being honest about our struggles allows us to help each other.

INSIGHT: Ephesus was a major and influential seaport city in the Roman Empire located near the Aegean coast in modern-day Turkey. It flourished under the reign of Caesar Augustus and is closely associated with the ministries of three prominent figures in the early church: the apostle Paul, who founded the church at Ephesus; his protégé Timothy, who served as pastor there; and the apostle John, who, according to tradition, returned to Ephesus to continue his ministry after his release from the Isle of Patmos. The church in Ephesus also played a significant role in the development of Christian Scripture: Paul wrote three letters to Ephesus that would later be recognized as inspired Scripture—one to the church (Ephesians) and two to its young pastor (1 and 2 Timothy). And John specifically mentions the church of Ephesus as one of the recipients of the book of Revelation (Rev. 2:1). Dennis Moles

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THE NEED FOR APOLOGETICS: THE DEFENSE OF THE FAITH

THE NEED FOR APOLOGETICS: THE DEFENSE OF THE FAITH

Please leave comments on my blog:

       www.Mannsword.blogspot.com or my
       Facebook page: “Apologetics for Today.”

By His Mercies Alone, Daniel
For more great blogs go to Daniel’s blog site above.

The Need for Apologetics: The Defense of the Faith

Sometimes we expect that a few good arguments will unlock salvation’s door. When we find that they don’t and that we are met with a glaring sneer instead of a grateful embrace, we are hurt and conclude that “apologetics doesn’t work.” We then swing to the opposite – “I’m going to simply let my good works speak for the Gospel.”

Admittedly, in our post-Christian society where people have been warned and inoculated against the Gospel, it might be better to lead with good works in most cases. However, we are instructed to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that [we] have” (1 Peter 3:15). Therefore, I want to present a rationale for this.

Apologetics - reasons to believe in the Christian faith – is primarily for us. We have to know why we believe and how to defend ourselves against the many challenges to the faith.

Moses knew that the children of Israel needed reasons to believe – evidences – in order to follow him out of Egypt. In the midst of a burning bush, God had instructed him to return to Egypt to lead His people out of captivity, but Moses was reluctant:

"What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, 'The Lord did not appear to you'?" (Exodus 4:1).

Instead, of commanding Moses to tell the people “Just believe,” God  equipped Moses with a quiver of miraculous evidences – a rod turning into a snake, a leprous hand, and water turning into blood – to prove that He had sent Moses.

Jesus also understood that His disciples needed evidences to support their faith. He therefore prophesied to them what would happen to Him so that they would believe once these prophecies were fulfilled:

I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. (John 14:29)

We also need supportive evidences to help in sustaining our faith. After the crucifixion, Jesus’ disciples fled, convinced that everything that they had believed in had been for naught. In order to bring them back, they required the proof of His resurrection appearances:

After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3)

John the Baptist also had his struggles with his faith in Jesus after he was jailed, prior to his execution. He therefore sent his disciples to Jesus to ascertain whether He was truly the Messiah. Instead of Jesus telling them to tell John, “Just believe,” he told them to relate the various confirmatory miracles they had seen Him perform (Mat. 11).

We need to know why we believe. Doubts are birthed like tsunami waves in our post-Christian world. The highly touted Jesus Seminar proclaimed that only 18% of what Jesus is purported to have said in the Gospels is authentic. In the wake of this pronouncement, the faith of many had been severely shaken.

Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code rattled thousands of others with his claims that the selection of the Bible’s Gospel accounts was merely the product of political in-fighting and church counsels. He claimed that there had been 70 other gospels vying for inclusion.

As a result, one woman wrote that she could never again be able to trust the Gospels as she had. How tragic! Fortunately, there were many able apologists who have exposed the fallacies of both Brown and the Seminar. However, those who don’t believe that apologetics is necessary will neglect such works.

How can we face the world with the confidence and the boldness we need if we can’t be confident about the basis of our faith – the Bible! We can’t! Before I went to seminary, I subscribed to Biblical Archeology Review. Many of the authors wrote approvingly of the Wellhausen Hypothesis – a radical theory of how the Hebrew Scriptures were humanly assembled by cutting-and-pasting from pre-existing manuscripts. They were so confident of this skeptical theory that they didn’t even provide any evidence for it.

I was troubled but decided that I would lock my doubts away, pushing them back into a crevice of my mind until, perhaps, I might have the tools to critically examine them. However, this strategy didn’t work. The doubts that this theory had provoked interfered with both my reading of Scripture and my faith. Consequently, I read the Bible less and with less excitement. The doubt that the Bible might merely be a human creation festered in the back of my mind.

Fortunately, I was struck down with a bad back for several months. Someone had given me a copy of Gleason Archer’s Survey of Old Testament Introductions. Although it was one of the driest texts I’ve ever read, I cried my way through it. Archer dealt conclusively with the Wellhausen Hypothesis, and restored my Bible back to me as if Jesus Himself had returned to me.

I think it inevitable that without understanding the rational foundations of the faith and without knowing how to critique the challenges, our faith and life will suffer.

Apologetics is also necessary for the health of the church. Jude counseled the church to oppose false teachings and not neglect them:

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. (Jude 1:3-4)

Elders, therefore, had to have the ability to defend the faith against false teaching:


He [the elder] must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it…They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach. (Titus 1:7-11)

The possibility that the faith of the church might suffer damage must be a central concern. Many studies have shown that 80-90 percent of regular church-going youth completely leave the church by the end of their forth year in college. Even many of those who remain do so with a faith severely compromised by their involvement with the surrounding culture.

Clearly, the churches are failing to prepare their youth for the challenges of this world – sexual permissiveness, theistic evolution, multiculturalism, religious pluralism, moral relativism… We are neglecting the life of the mind, the port-of-call where destructive teachings are entering. Arrogantly, some are neglectful of apologetics, claiming, “I know what I believe and what I have experienced, and no one will take that away from me.” They are confident that they can “stand” (1 Cor. 10:12-13) even though they are neglectful of the Biblical instruction to also love God with our minds.

While it is probably true that the Spirit begins His work in our heart, we are nevertheless commanded to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

We are also instructed to subject all thoughts and worldviews under the scrutiny of the Gospel (2 Cor. 10:4-5). If we neglect the mind, the world will not. It will co-opt our minds at great cost to the church.

Think of the mind as a protective shield. If it is not fully operational, attacks will penetrate freely to our heart of faith, undermining the peace, joy and confidence of the church. We will stumble around in a schizophrenic haze – our minds in conflict with what we believe in our heart.

Apologetics is also required for the seeker. In fact, we are commanded to have in hand the rationale for our beliefs (1 Peter 3:15). I wouldn’t even begin to consider the Biblical faith as long as I believed that evolution was a fact. I was convinced that if Darwin was right, Genesis had to be wrong. However, a Jehovah’s Witness gave me a book critiquing evolution, the theory I had once thought to be unassailable. This made me more receptive to the Bible.

Similarly, in Search for the Truth, Bruce Malone wrote:

Prior to graduation from college, I had not once been shown any of the scientific evidence for creation either in school or in church. Little wonder, that by the time I started my career [as a chemist], God had little relevance in my life. It wasn’t as though I had any animosity toward God or religion. It simply held no relevance to the world around me. This should be no surprise when the subject never came up in school and everything seemed to be explained without reference to a Creator.

Apologetics is also helpful for cultural interaction. My apologetics professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, William Lane Craig, stated that people will not believe what they find unbelievable. Today, many deem the Christian faith “unbelievable.” I think that part of the reason for this is that the church has become intellectually lazy and compromised. We have lost the ability to show forth the wisdom of God in the public marketplace of ideas. We are no longer culturally proactive as we must be:

The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death. (Proverbs 13:14)

Wisdom is part of our inheritance. We have wisdom regarding so many areas of life – forgiveness, morality, justice, child rearing, and marriage. However, we have hid our light under a bushel basket. Why? For one thing, we have failed to develop the ability to understand and critique the ideas of the world (2 Cor. 10:4-5). Consequently, we don’t know how to speak to the world, and we know it. Therefore, we fear the world and interaction with it. Instead, we need to understand the poverty of their thinking so that we will not be driven to take cover.

What happens when we neglect the life of the mind and apologetics? We will keep our light hidden. However, many are now saying, “Well, my good works are the light.”

However, even though there is some truth in this, it is not adequate. It is like flying a airplane with one wing. It just won’t fly! Instead, Paul claimed that we are “the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved” as we speak “the word of God” (2 Cor. 2:15-17). This is not to leave out good works. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that we need both!

When Paul visited the synagogues around the Mediterranean, he didn’t go there to perform good works alone. He went there to preach the Gospel and also to reason with the Jews according to the Scriptural evidence:

As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. "This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ," he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women. (Acts 17:2-4; 18:4)

God’s arm has not withered away. He can still save through the Gospel, even in our post-Christian world.


Tuesday, July 26, 2016

THE DEATH OF MODERN SECULARISM

THE DEATH OF MODERN SECULARISM

For more great blogs as this one go to Daniel’s blog site at:  www.Mannsword.blogspot.com

According to the modernist (atheism, humanism, evolutionism), the only reality or truth is physical. Spiritual or moral reality is non-existent. According to the postmodernist, all truth claims are mere human inventions. Consequently, reality is either non-existent or unknowable.

When these two came together, they produced the perfect storm of modern secularism (MS), which believes that truth and justice have no independent reality. At best, they are no more than ideas that evolve as society evolves. Consequently, justice doesn’t truly exist. It is merely a concept we need to keep society going.

If you listen closely to what people say, you will see indications of MS all around you. For example, the pastor preached that because perfect love casts out fear, as the Apostle John had written, we shouldn’t listen to the hate-mongers who warn us about Muslim refugees.

Afterwards, I asked her whether or not we should listen to those who warn about swine flu, the bubonic plague, or radiation leaks. Well, of course, that was a different matter, but why? Plagues and radiation leaks come up on the radar of the secularist, but a group victimized by the West does not. A different set of rules applies here. This reflects MS’ leftist leaning that there are groups who are worthy of preferential treatment. Just look at Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s demand that the courts give preferential treatment to people of color!

Forget the ideal of color-blind justice! And why not forget if, for MS, “justice” is no more than a social construct. It is an institution to be manipulated according to need and ideology.

To the pastor, I brought up the fact that only 1% of asylum seekers that President Obama has brought over were Christians, as opposed to 99% Muslims, most of whom, according to surveys, want to impose shariah law. Without dealing with the threatening implications of this disparity, the pastor interjected that we have to be equally concerned about all groups of people.

I didn’t bring up the obvious fact that the huge imbalance among asylum grantees did not reflect equal concern. Nor did I mention verses that require love to begin with our own households – both spiritual and biological. Instead, I objected that:

       “Muslims refuse to integrate. The Koran even prohibits them from being friends with non-Muslims (Koran Surahs 3:27; 5:54; 60:1; 60:4), except to deceive to promote Islam.”

She fired back that it is all a matter of interpretation. I responded:

       “Some things are so clear that they are no longer a matter of our personal interpretation. When the police pull me over for driving 50 MPH in a 25 MPH zone, I cannot claim that it’s all just a matter of interpretation. “25 MPH” means just what it says. I cannot say that I thought it was only a suggestion or a ballpark figure.”

I could have mentioned how the Muslim authorities interpret their Koran on the subject of friendship. One commentator writes (www.koranqa.com; fatwa 59879):

       “Undoubtedly the Muslim is obliged to hate the enemies of Allaah and to disavow them, because this is the way of the Messengers and their followers.

       “Based on this, it is not permissible for a Muslim to feel any love in his heart towards the enemies of Allaah who are in fact his enemies too…”

       “But if a Muslim treats them with kindness and gentleness in the hope that they will become Muslim and will believe, there is nothing wrong with that, because it comes under the heading of opening their hearts to Islam. But if he despairs of them becoming Muslim, then he should treat them accordingly.”

However, the pastor continued:

       “The Bible also includes such verses. You cannot just point the finger at Islam.”

I challenged her to provide just one such verse. She responded that Jesus claimed that He came with a sword to separate families.

I responded that this verse was a far cry from instructing us to not have non-Christian friends. Instead, Jesus had been pointing to the impact we would have on others, even friends, as His children. He was preparing us for the fact that we would be hated:

       “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.” (John 15:18-20)

The pastor was struggling to come up with another verse, but she was rescued by the intervention an onlooker.

Why was she so ready to equate with Christianity and Islam, the Bible with the Koran – two sets of very different teachings, one highly violent, the other peaceful? She had embraced the prevailing worldview, MS, which eliminates the possibility of discerning any real differences.

In opposition to multi-culturalism, which holds that we cannot judge other cultures, wisdom requires discernment and making critical distinctions. Wisdom requires us to distinguish the victim from the victimizer and to treat them appropriately. It requires us to distinguish the student who is struggling to learn from the one who is disrupting the others. We also need the wisdom to discern real help from enablement, genocide from self-defense, and the innocent from the guilty.

However, MS is slowly eroding away the principles essential for the advancement of society. MS refuses to see and to even acknowledge the basic principles of justice – that there are truly the innocent and the guilty. How does MS do this? It denies the existence of objective moral absolutes. This relegates justice and truth to mere evolving human creations.

My next conversation made this painfully clear. She was a sensitive and caring woman. These are qualities that I greatly admire.

She admitted that she was totally comfortable with the sermon. After challenging her, she responded with passion:

       “I don’t feel comfortable with what you are saying. You are making hateful divisions among the religions. You are pitting us against them. You are saying that you are better than they are. You are looking down on them and marginalizing them. I cannot go along with any of this.”

Of course, I wasn’t saying these things, but she accurately discerned that I was drawing out some differences between Islam and Christianity. I asked her whether we should have pitted ourselves against Hitler. She could not answer this question directly, but insisted that love could conquer all, even in the case of Hitler.

This is what justice looks like on the streets of MS. It has now become non-existent in the minds of many. It has been eliminated by an overly indulgent form of “love.”

How did this happen? First, the concept of justice has been overturned in favor of pragmatism, what works, what bring desired results, even at the expense of the innocent. This means that we cannot judge in any objective sense. Meanwhile, she was judging me!

Second, many atheists/materialists deny the existence of freewill, and if freewill doesn’t exist, then we couldn’t have acted other than the way that the forces had determined we would act. It also means that we are not deserving of punishment or even criticism.

Third, even if MS does acknowledge freewill, it is only a mere shadow of what we usually regard as freewill. Instead, we are overwhelmingly products of our upbringing, culture, and genetics – nature and nurture. Once again, we are pre-programmed to do what we do. Judging individuals and cultures is therefore regarded as unfair.

Yes, MS is self-contradictory. While it claims that judging is unfair, it is just as judgmental as most other belief systems. However, only a coherent worldview can provide a compelling vision to inspire a nation and human thriving. Meanwhile, MS has left us vulnerable to every pathogen. Oops, there I go judging again. After all, I am suggesting the forbidden – that humanity is somehow superior to the pathogens.

Nevertheless, I did grieve after these conversations – not that I had said the wrong things, but if I was going to offend, perhaps I should have allowed the centrality of the Gospel to offend. God lead me!


THEISTIC EVOLUTIONISTS MISREPRESENT CREATIONISTS

Arguing in favor of a 24 hour day, Young Earth Creationists (YEC) often cite a verse from the Ten Commandments:

       Exodus 20:11 (ESV) For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Here is how their logic goes:

1.    The Sabbath day is consistently a 24 hour day throughout Scripture.
2.    The other days must also be 24 hour days. Why? If “day” represented a period of millions of years, as theistic evolutionists allege, then we should also expect that the Sabbath day would likewise involve millions of years.
3.    However, the Bible would not have commanded us to rest for millions of years.

Against this, theistic evolutionists claim that the YEC is not justified in interpreting Scripture in this manner. Here is an example from the Biologos Foundation. Can you find the logical flaws:

       If “plain reading” means “what the words clearly mean in my language and culture”, then I suppose Exodus 20:11 could be used to support six day Creationism.  But if that is really how we’re supposed to read Scripture, then 1 Samuel 2:8 means the earth is set on pillars, and Deuteronomy 21:21 means we should stone our rebellious sons, and John 15:5 means Jesus is a plant, and Roman 16:16 means we should kiss everyone we meet.  The “plain reading” of Scripture leads to picking and choosing which verses we like and which we ignore.  That is not a responsible way to read the Bible.  There are reasons we don’t take the plain meaning of those other verses as the best interpretation of Scripture; that makes us at least ask whether there might be reasons not to take Exodus 20:11 and Genesis 1 in their plain sense. http://biologos.org/blogs/jim-stump-faith-and-science-seeking-understanding/10-misconceptions-about-evolution#sthash.uFWdZLFY.dpuf

Did you find the flaws yet? First of all, Biologos is engaging in misrepresentation. Bible-respecting interpreters never argue that a “plain reading” means “what the words clearly mean in MY language and culture.” Instead, when we talk about the “plain reading” or “literal sense,” our goal is to recover the original intended meaning of Scripture. This entails a sensitivity to genre and the use of language in its original setting. If it’s a metaphor, we try to understand it as such. If hyperbole, then we attempt to understand it as hyperbole.

Secondly, Biologos claims, “The ‘plain reading’ of Scripture leads to picking and choosing which verses we like and which we ignore.” Certainly, “picking and choosing” fails to represent a high view of Scripture or the way we should try to interpret any piece of literature. By “picking and choosing,” we can draw out almost any interpretation we so desire.

While Biologos makes this charge, they fail to indicate even one verse that YEC leaves out of the equation. Meanwhile, to make it jive with Darwin, Biologos dismisses the entire historicity of the account of creation and the Fall (Gen. 1-3), in opposition to how the NT consistently understands these chapters.

Thirdly, Biologos reasoning tends to suggest that we cannot know with any certainty if anything in Scripture can be taken literally. If we cannot know how to interpret Exodus 20:11, then how can we know how to interpret the rest of the Bible. We might be taking poetry for historical fact.

Admittedly, Biologos has “reasons not to take Exodus 20:11 and Genesis 1 in their plain sense.” What then are their reasons? These are not reasons that arise from the way we ordinarily interpret a piece of literature. Instead, these are reasons imposed on the Bible from without – from the theory of evolution.

It is like interpreting the account of the Magis from an evolutionary psychological point of view – They had journeyed from their far-away land because they were in competition with other Babylonian wise men, who had become more influential. Therefore, the Magi journeyed, not because of a star (representing their hopes) or their desire to worship the King of the Jews, but rather a cynical quest to regain ascendency through a new and attractive “revelation.”

Through twisting Scripture to bring it into conformity with Darwin, theistic evolutionists no longer know what to believe. They advise me, “We have to remain humble about our interpretation of Scripture.” I only wish they would be equally humble about evolution.

Meanwhile, they are so humble about Scripture, that they are passively absorbing everything from the surrounding university culture. I therefore challenged them to go on record regarding their approval or disapproval of same-sex marriage.

Only two would reveal their hand. Both were in favor of it.



New York School of the Bible: http://www.nysb.nyc/