Wearing the Bulls-Eye

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Christian Living | No Comments »

One thing that one commonly hears about Christianity is that once a person accepts Christ, they begin to experience a lot more trouble. You might think that I'm going to go into people's impression that accepting Christ meant that life would be easy, but that's not where I'm going with this. (Though, that would be good, too!) Instead, I'd like to address something that I've heard from non-believers. Often, I've heard rebuttals to this that basically ...

Church vs. Christianity – Part IV

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Bible & Scripture, Christian Living | Comments Off

For the past few weeks, we've been looking at a passage of scripture from John 4. The story is about Jesus' interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well. Today, I'd like to continue with that story and take a look at what happened after the woman left Jesus and the disciples and went back to her town. We already saw that Jesus acted with compassion, understanding, love and most of all...grace. He didn't condemn or judge, ...

Church vs. Christianity – Part III

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Bible & Scripture, Christian Living | Comments Off

Well, we've looked at Jesus' initial interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well and gone over some of the things I noticed that seemed to stand out about this meeting. Now, we're moving on to the next phase of this event. As it happens, the woman was still there talking with Jesus when the disciples returned. I find it very interesting that these "giants" of faith, the founding fathers of the Christian movement, could have ...

Church vs. Christianity

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Bible & Scripture, Christian Living | Comments Off

It is no secret that throughout history, terrible human tragedies can be traced back to the Church. Specifically the Christian Church. Notice I'm using the capital 'C' for Church. This is to indicate the idea that it is the body of Christ followers and not a specific denomination that I'm referring to. What sorts of things am I referring to? Just read the news some time. Look at the pictures of Christian protestors at the doors ...

A-B-C Plan

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Christian Living, Political Issues | Comments Off

We've all heard of the ABC plan for fighting against the spread of the AIDS virus. If you haven't, it came out during (I think actually from but I can't be sure) the previous presidential administration. The basic idea of the ABC plan is pretty simple. The 'A' stands for "Abstinence." In other words, the idea here is that one way to slow the spread of AIDS is to abstain from sexual activity. This part of ...

Eternal Punishment vs. Finite Crime

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Christian Living | 8 Comments »

In Old Testament times, people would take revenge against one another in ways that were absolutely shocking. There was no balance. It was not uncommon to kill someone for being disrepectful or for some petty crime. Then God stepped in with the whole "eye for an eye" thing to keep things a bit more fair when it came to punishment and justice. Later, in the New Testament, Jesus raises the bar even more. It was no ...

Why We Still Sin

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Christian Living | 2 Comments »

Last week, I posted my thoughts on the subsitutionary atonement of Christ. At the end of that post, I posed a question that I promised to address this week. It's "next week" now, so I suppose I should keep my promise and address this issue. Interestingly enough, to a large degree my perspective given in last week's post is actually quite heavily rooted in the concepts I'm sharing this week. In other words, the question of ...

Atheist or Agnostic?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Christian Living | Comments Off

In the past, I had often thought a certain way regarding the difference between someone who claims to be an atheist versus someone claiming to be agnostic. My understanding had been that atheism was a very arrogant claim. My understanding was that to be an atheist, one was claiming that there was certainly no God. It seemed to me that this was an impossible claim unless one knew first-hand of the existence of every single ...

The Supreme Good (the Chief End of Man)

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 by Ty Wallace posted in Christian Living | Comments Off

"What is the chief end of man?" It is a question as old as the existence of man himself. Not only is this a very important question we should be asking ourselves (as well as know the answer to) but there is really no way a person can avoid it, although many try. And how so? If not by brushing it under a rug, people will take on one or more of the various philosophies of ...

Human Value

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 by Dan Carrington posted in Christian Living | 1 Comment »

According to the Bible, Man was created in God's image. It is upon this basis that Jesus makes His statement about the second greatest commandment which is to "love your neighbor as yourself." What about those who are not Christian and do not hold to the authority of the Bible? In those cases, how is human value determined? In fact, how is it even recognized as being valuable? If we are here as a mere result ...