Reach out to our Muslim neighbors

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Nabeel Qureshi Interview

Nabeel Qureshi was raised in a devout Muslim family in Virginia Beach, VA. He memorized the Qur’an by the age of 6 and prayed five times a day. When he went to college, his college roommate was a Christian. They spent three years debating the historical claims of both religions, and he came to realize that Christianity could withstand historical scrutiny but Islam could not.

At that point, he came face to face with a a difficult, life-changing decision: whether to abandon the Islam of his family and and heritage by embracing Christianity, or remain a Muslim, knowing that it could not stand up to history and reason. This was a decision that would ostracize him from his family. Continue reading “Reach out to our Muslim neighbors” →

What If Time Is An Illusion?

When we “look back” it may seem as if time was a dream.

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Photo by Beth Drenbel
Photo by Beth Drendel

What if time is an illusion?

A self-described atheist threw out this proposition offhandedly in a conversation I had with him recently. I think it makes sense to respect the people we dialogue with, including atheists, so I chewed on that proposition a bit.

As often is the case, I woke up this morning thinking about things that I had been thinking about the night before. In my reflection, it dawned on me that, perhaps, he was right: time is an illusion. It actually makes some sense, but maybe not like he imagined. Let me explain.

Continue reading “What If Time Is An Illusion?” →

Atheism and Freethinking

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Atheists like to call themselves freethinkers. Many of them have thrown off the shackles of religious and cultural bondage, and escaped the herd mentality, the taboos of religion and even culture, … but are they freethinkers?

Source: Atheism and Freethinking

Taking the Emotion out of Sin: A Study in the Substance of Death and Life

Let’s put aside the issue of morality, take the emotion out sin and see what we have left.

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(c) Can Stock Photo

“[T]he wages[1] of sin[2] is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23.

We tend to view sin in moralistic terms, but I wonder sometimes if we might look at sin in non-moralistic terms. The adage, “we are what we eat”, is an apt description for sin. How we eat is a moral issue for some people, but most people (or many at least) don’t view eating that way.

We tend to view sin in moralistic terms, as in reaping what we sow. [3] What if we try to take the morality out of the discussion? What would we have left?

Although sin is a moral issue at heart, the emotion of morality in this modern, post-Christian age in the US may obscure how we view sin and the relationship between sin and death.

Men have tried to hijack morality and claim it as a product of their own making. If God exists, however, He is the author of morality. God, Himself, is the moral standard. I would say that, without God, there is no such thing as objective morality.

If God doesn’t exist, we create our own morality, and your morality might be different than my morality. The morality that is predominant in my community, may not be the morality to which your community subscribes. No one is ultimately right, and no one is ultimately wrong, except that those with the power and influence get to set the standard.

But that’s not what this piece is about. Let’s put aside the issue of morality and take the emotion out of the equation. Let’s take the emotion out of sin and see what is left.

Continue reading “Taking the Emotion out of Sin: A Study in the Substance of Death and Life” →

Evidence of the Resurrection

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(c) Can Stock Photo
(c) Can Stock Photo

The resurrection is the centerpiece of Christianity. If Jesus did not arise from the dead, everything is for naught. If He didn’t rise from the dead, he would be just a man. If he was just a man, he wasn’t even a wise man (like Ghandi or Khalil Gibran); he was a madman or a liar because no wise man is confused about his deity.

Most modern scholars accept, at a minimum, that the people who followed Jesus in the 1st Century believed that He arose from the dead and appeared to them in his body after his death. Paul wrote to the people of Corinth, recounting a list of people who had seen Jesus alive after His death on the cross, including more than five hundred (500), some of whom Paul said were still alive.

Think about that: about 35 years after Jesus died, most of more than five hundred people who claimed to see Jesus risen from the dead in his body were still alive.

This is not proof that Jesus arose from the dead, of course, but we can’t just write it off either! Continue reading “Evidence of the Resurrection” →