Category: Sociology

Questions on Morality and the Materialist

if God is not the supreme moral law giver, on what basis do we have morality, and how do we judge something like genocide?

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In a naturalistic world in which there is nothing supernatural, nothing other than the material world, and everything there is can be summed up by what we can touch, see, hear, feel and measure, survival of the fittest reigns. In a world like that, what is wrong with genocide?

Genocide is like the ultimate survival of the fittest. The superior people group dominates, overcomes and wipes out the inferior people group. What could be more Darwinian? What could be more natural in a naturalistic world?

This, in fact, is largely the history of the world. Why, then, is this expression of survival of the fittest wrong?

Thankfully most people today recoil from such a notion, but on what basis?

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Taking Our Politics Back to Jesus

Our efforts built on a different foundation other than Jesus will not stand.

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Casual interracial couple having an argument in a terrace
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I am torn with mixed emotions as I watch my social media news feeds well up with agitating statements from pole to pole. The inauguration and the women’s marches have set my social media world on edge – or rather edges. Polarization is the structure and substance of our modern discourse.

In the middle of it all are my brothers and sisters in Christ, dividing over the same issues that divide the country. We feel compelled to take sides, to hold up our own partisan signs, to signal where we stand and to look around to see who is standing with us.

That we seem to be lining up in the same fashion as the rest of our world has me feeling uneasy. Are we no different for the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus than the world around us who finds no need of a Savior and no palate for a Lord?

Have we been born again, born of the Spirit, born from above? Or have we simply adopted a layer of adornment that we have put over the worldviews we already have?

I ask these questions for myself as I put them on paper. I am asking these questions for all of us who profess Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

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Equality in the Economy of God

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“Culture tells us two great lies about success: you can be whatever you want to be, and you can be the best in the world.”

This was a statement in a newsletter I received. It couldn’t be truer. Not that we want to hear that sort of thing. We want to be told we “can do it”! And, we like believing the lie.

The truth is that we can’t all be the best. We can’t be whatever we want to be.

Just being real here.

I don’t want to buy into the lies. I want the truth, and I think most people (many people anyway) really want the truth. We get tired of the lies. Give me something I can stand on. I don’t want a pipe dream. Continue reading “Equality in the Economy of God” →

The Secret to a Happy Healthy Life

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I recently read this entry in a local paper that allows readers to call in and leave anonymous messages of current and political import. Excuse the length of the following entry that I am reproducing here. I think it is important enough to reproduce in its entirety, because it bears some comment:

My parents had four daughters. We are all in our 60s now. Three of us earned master’s degrees. The happiest daughter is the daughter who spent a short time in college and married young. She has a wonderful husband and children and grandchildren. The other three are without husbands and can be very crabby. I know because I am one of them…. The three single sisters are all working because we have to work. Our married sister has a job, by choice, and loves her life. To all the 20-something girls out there… You cannot hug a diploma. A wall of degrees will not fill your heart with love. You will be alone night after night wondering what it would be like to have a nice guy at your side. Marriage is far better than a life of degrees.

Before commenting, I need to preface what I am going to say. Marriage is no guarantee of a happy life. Plenty of married people are unhappy. If that weren’t the case, the divorce rate would not perennially hover around the 50% mark. Marriage is no magic pill.

Gaining a college education is also nothing to snub. The reasons people go to college, however, are many: to get an education (duh!), because it is expected of them, to get a good job, because they don’t know what else to do, to find a spouse….

Looking back 40 years later with the kind of clarity that hindsight reveals puts those reasons into perspective, apparently. If only we could gain that perspective looking forward! But then, looking back may not really be 20/20 – unless you are looking back at a 75 year Harvard study. Continue reading “The Secret to a Happy Healthy Life” →

How Do We Present The Gospel?

As Christians, are we going to be like Peter, lopping off the centurion’s ear with a sword?

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“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, `Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything – God and our friends and ourselves included – as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.” – C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

We need to be very careful how we present the Gospel to the world. Please read this editorial. See the Gospel Coalition’s August article on Whether ISIS is Beheading Children. Back in August, there was some question whether the beheadings were really happening. It seems to be accepted as fact now, but the point of the article is important. We need to avoid being carried away with emotion and fleshy anger.

In that light this article is a must read! (A Christian Response to ISIS) This is an extreme example, but what of those who are “enemies” of Christ in culture, politics, whatever? What would Jesus do? How would Jesus respond? We need to think and pray about that.

Continue reading “How Do We Present The Gospel?” →