How often do we pray for help, but when it arrives, reject it and send it packing? Much more frequently than we’re even aware. There’s a simple explanation for this: we think we know what the help should look like. When it comes in a form we don’t recognize, we assume God didn’t answer our…
via When Help Arrives, but We Send It Packing — Lori Stanley Roeleveld . . . Disturber of Hobbits
Good solution for all the “gotcha” arguments that are often presented in opposition to Christianity. If you can achieve the existence and sovereignty of God, a lot of tough issues fall into place. Let us pray that the Spirit moves amongst our friends and loved ones, for only he saves in the end.
I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery
So, this is just an advice post for doing apologetics.
Here are three situations I’ve run into while doing apologetics in the last month.
First situation. I was talking with a lady who is an atheist. I had a copy of “God’s Crime Scene” in my hand, and she asked me about it. I told her that it was a book written by the guy who solved the homicide case that I asked her to watch on Dateline. She remembered – it was the two-hour special on the woman who was killed with a garrotte. She pointed at the book and said “what’s in it?” I said, it has 8 pieces of evidence that fit better with a theistic worldview than with an atheistic one, and some of them scientific. Her reply to me was – literally – “which denomination do you…
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Tomorrow’s tax day and it’s brought out the contrarian in me.
Like many of my readers, I fall into the sociopolitical pool that mistrusts taxes generally. It can be disheartening to think that too many tax dollars are going to nothing, funneled into places that help nobody, and that the resulting voids only call out for more tax dollars to fill them.
But it is encouraging to remember that they also do good.
Those firefighters who help repel the flames creeping towards your home? Paid for with tax dollars. We Montanans are especially grateful for that today.
The soldiers who put their lives on the line to stand watch over our country? Trained, equipped, and paid with tax dollars.
The police? Same thing.
After their military tour, some young soldiers go to school and get degrees (like mine in secondary education after my Air Force years) off of the G.I. Bill, also paid by taxes.
Of course, our teachers are paid through taxes.
And those glaring Montana potholes that nearly destroyed my car this morning? Not getting fixed by anything but taxes.
Paul teaches us, “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1). And this is said with brutal, excessive Rome in mind.
The Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by asking whether he thought taxes should be paid. If he said yes, the people would denounce him; if he said no, the state would. Instead, Jesus slipped the trap (as he always did so well) with a statement that helps form part of the foundation of our modern concept of separation of church and state: “Therefore give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).
So, as we go about launching opinions on social media about whether or not taxes should increase, we can least pair it with thankfulness for those who serve their world on them.
“…most Christians think if we could only get the spiritual combination just right that God would then be willing to help us out.”
It’s not popular theology, and it doesn’t naturally put butts in pews, but it’s actually the best news out there.
*Trigger warning* While I keep things as vague as possible (and the news article just states the facts) please don’t read the news article if you’d rather not. The title alone may be all you can stomach: Man gets 60 years in prison for trying to sell 4-year-old daughter for sex. Most of this blog post will move on from this initial news story.
GK Chesterton is often remembered for his remark that:
“Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology that can really be proved.”
Chesterton saw it as the one doctrine that could actually be verified by the observation of human behavior and history. I agree. How some can deny human sinfulness is beyond me. We are all sinful, and need a Savior. Yet many people, even Christians, can struggle with this doctrine. Many insist than humanity is really good at heart…
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You know the handful of pioneering saints who carried the name of Jesus on such vast scale that we sit envious in church hearing about them? St. Patrick was one of them.
Recently, I was emailed by a follower basically asking, “is Satan real, or an illusion?”
I can’t believe I’ve reached the stage of being asked questions – yeeeeeeeeeeee – but fortunately, there’s Scripture. I’ll just go there.
Satan is real. He is treated as a conscious being with intelligence and personality. And he is a (limited) threat.
This subject makes people sensitive. There’s a lot of (pardon the expression) heated opinion about Satan and his precise role in the Christian’s life. Good teachings, bad teachings, and bad teachings that spring off both the good and bad.
Personal conviction: I want Scripture, straight-up, as it truly is. I don’t want man’s “compensational” teachings. Np Scripture tossed aside or marginalized because “people will run the wrong way with it”, or because it frightens them, or because it diminishes God in their preferred system. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater, in other words. The term “bathwater theology” describes this phenemenon well, and there’s a lot of it floating around.
Here’s what I find in Scripture (and may God lead me well in this).
