Relating to Pain

For some time now, there have been many responses to the concept of what is known as the “Problem of Evil.” Sometimes this is also called the “Problem of Pain” or the “Problem of Suffering.” It is an argument offered to challenge the idea that there exists a God who is all powerful and simultaneously all loving.

Was the Resurrection Physical?

Over these many centuries since the time of Jesus of Nazareth, many ideas have been offered to attempt to explain certain things about Him and about God in general. Many of them have been denounced as heresies throughout this time. However, now and again, these same ideas that were written off as unbiblical or heretical crop back up in different ways.

One such heresy is based on the gnostic offshoot called “docetism.” Docetism is from the Greek root “dokein” which means “to seem.” The idea here is that Jesus only seemed to be human. A further refined heresy, based on this idea, has to do specifically with the resurrection. Some, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, believe that Jesus’ resurrection was not physical but was rather a spiritual resurrection.

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Knowledge Puffs Up

The world is full of irony. Of the many things people use against Christians, much of the ammunition non-believers use against us has been provided to them…by us. Not always on purpose, of course. Often it can be a simple mis-application of scripture.

For example, one of the charges leveled against the Church is that Christians are anti-intellectual dolts who’s faith is blind and irrational. To a large degree, for a sadly large number of Christians, this assessment is not very inaccurate. That is not the main point I wish to make here, however. Instead, I’d like to look at one of the reasons that may be the root cause of this type of thinking.

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Wise Men, Mangers and Baby Jesus

Once again, we are coming up on the time of year when we celebrate one of the greatest events in the history of…well…history. It’s a celebration of the incarnation, when the divine took on human form and lived among His creation.

There have been so many traditions, from so many different backgrounds, that have become standards. They have become so very familiar to us that we often times will accept various stories and teaching without question. Sometimes, this is completely benign. Other times it can be dangerous. Continue Reading...

Seventh Day of Rest

One of the “internal” debates these days within the Church is regarding the days of creation. There are basically two camps on this issue. First, there are the “Old Earth Creationists” who believe that the Earth is millions (or billions) of years old. On the other side, there are the “Young Earth Creationists” who believe that the Earth is fewer than 10,000 years old.

What this essentially comes down to is how we interpret the days of creation in Genesis 1. The Old Earthers interpret these days as being long spans of time while the Young Earthers view these as normal, 24-hour days.

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Exodus

I have heard it often claimed that there is absolutely no evidence for the Old Testament recounting of the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt as told in the book of Exodus. This is a pretty significant claim since it is fairly well known that the Egyptians had a tendency to keep fairly comprehensive records. So, this leaves the question…Is there evidence of the Exodus?

To answer that question, a quick search turned up some pretty interesting information. And that’s only after a few minutes of searching to find something, then looking further into that evidence to identify the veracity. The initial finding, however, only took a few minutes. That being the case, I’m a bit less than impressed with the claims that there is absolutely no evidence of the Exodus.

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Reasoning

Christians have, for some time now, been accused of a lack of reason. Typically, the way things are portrayed, people like to make it seem as though faith and reason are opposites and therefore are incompatible.Sadly, even those within the Church are often convinced of this.  I’ve written before about this and still feel the same when it comes to the faith vs. reason argument.

Not to worry, I’m not going to re-write that post again. Instead, what I wanted to do today was go a little more in depth on the idea of reasoning. What I wanted to go over today was the fact that there are, currently identified and defined, three distinct methods of reasoning. That’s right, there are three different ways to use reasoning. They are deductive, inductive and abductive. And I’d like to take some time to discuss these three types of reasoning that we use and how/when they are typically used.

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The Third Day

If I were smart, I’d wait until we were coming up on Easter before I posted something about the resurrection. But, here I am writing about it now…just before Thanksgiving. I guess I could make an argument that it still makes sense since, as a Christian, the empty tomb is something I’m thankful for.

One question that is debated quite often about Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection is what day He was crucified and what day he rose again. Some say He was crucified on Wednesday, then there was Thursday, Friday, Saturday (three days) and He rose on Sunday. Others say it was Thursday and that was day one. Of course, the more traditional understanding is that it was Friday to Sunday.

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Human Rights – Abortion

According to our founding fathers, there are certain rights we have that are attributed to the fact that we are human. These rights, according to the Declaration of Independence, are given to us by our Creator. The list in the Declaration is not exhaustive, as indicated by the preceding phrase “that among these are…” (emphasis mine)

So, according to the founding principles of this country, we have certain rights that transcend human authorities. We also have rights which are granted by human authorities. The right to vote, for example, is not ours as a result of our humanity, but our citizenship of this country. This is an often misunderstood, yet very important distinction to make.

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Prayer in Public Schools

Since I’ve apparently been stuck on the “separation of church and state” thing these past couple weeks, I figured why stop now? Besides, it’s given me a lot to think about as far as what constitutes a violation of the First Amendment and what does not. Perhaps it’s just me, but it seems as though there is a lot of gray area when it comes to this issue.

One of the things that came to mind was regarding the opportunity for a “moment of silence.” Many people consider this a thinly veiled way of saying “prayer time.” In all honesty, I’m not sure that this is all that far off. However, even if it were “prayer time,” what religion would it be that would be “endorsed” as a result of this?

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