Intellectualism and Scholarship for Christ

On the other side of our language is something which sustains it which can’t be contained within it … and that’s what we call God.

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Olin Hall

As Christians, we naturally emphasize faith because faith is what God rewards. Faith is what connects us to God. Without faith it’s impossible to please God. But, faith also separates people from God – when they don’t have it.

Faith is a stumbling block for the agnostic and the atheist.

When agnostics and atheists (and sometimes even Christians) talk about faith, they often talk about faith in the “blind” sense, divorced from reason and rationality. Real faith, however, is anything but blind or irrational.

For the Christian, faith informs a God logic that is captured in doctrine. This logic is far from irrational or inconsequential. Faith is part of that God logic, but it isn’t divorced from logic or truths discoverable in  the material world that God created. Continue reading “Intellectualism and Scholarship for Christ” →

The Light in the Darkness

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We, all human kind, have an enemy that seeks to devour us. (1 Peter 5:8) We see evidence of this enemy’s work in the world in the news every day. It takes many forms: gang killings, child sexual abuse, crime in general, divisive politics and the “culture wars”, and all the ways that people hurt people and the things that cause divisiveness, lack of respect, lack of peace and turmoil in the world.

Some of that turmoil is reflected in the over aggression of policeman, who are called to serve and protect, who exhibit a callous disregard of life, even for the lives of obvious criminals. Some of that turmoil is seen in the rioting, looting and blind anger that is partially a response to incidents of police misconduct and partially the boiling over of a cauldron of racial unrest. Some of that turmoil is is evidenced in the increasing number of incidents of violence against men and women in uniform.

We live in a fallen, hurting and divisive world. Continue reading “The Light in the Darkness” →

The Exclusivity of Truth

We cannot take the position that all religions are getting at the same truth unless we claim the kind of superior knowledge that we say no one has a right to claim.

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On the Right Road - Ellen Posledni
On the Right Road – Ellen Posledni

Most people are not comfortable with atheism. They believe (know?) there is something greater than us, a cosmic Being or some Divine Truth. They intuitively know that the universe did not form itself out of nothing. But many people are also not comfortable with the exclusivity of religious propositions, especially in this post modern, pluralistic world.

In my opinion, the statement that all religions are equally true just doesn’t hold up. I say this having studied world religions in college and being a religious nerd for the last 40 years.

There are some similarities among religions at the surface, and there are some shared principles, but the ultimate, fundamental propositions of the various religions cannot be aligned with each other. Each of them has principals that are exclusive of other principals of other religions.

Most people who are realistic and honest (in my opinion) don’t attempt to say that all religions are true, in this ultimate sense, because it simply isn’t a tenable position, but that thought creates a dilemma. It makes us uncomfortable in the increasingly pluralistic world in which we live.

Continue reading “The Exclusivity of Truth” →

6 Helps for the Christian Preparing for College

College, for me, was a time of great spiritual growth. Even in that secular academic environment, I thrived both in faith and in academics. You can too. You can grow in your walk with Christ – not in spite of the challenges of an unbelieving, or even hostile, secular environment, but because of it!

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I have been reading for some time about how this generation of youth coming out of “the Church” are not as biblically literate as past generations. I do not know, myself, whether that is true or not, but I do know that many people of faith struggle in college.

Outside of Christian colleges, the academic world is, generally, is not very friendly toward faith. Those academics who are not actually hostile to the kind of faith that the Bible teaches simply put up with it as if it were some sort of oddity that people with lesser intelligence and more naivete get caught up in, but which has little relevance to anything intellectual.

That is far from the truth, of course. The intellectual underpinnings of faith are deep and wide. For the Bible believer, however, faith leads and the intellect follows. That is not the case for most of academia. Even for those who give some intellectual assent to faith in the academic world, intellect is the leader, and faith (if we can call it that) is the follower. That is not the faith of Abraham that God counted as righteousness. Our Christian colleges and universities include many of these people in their ranks. Continue reading “6 Helps for the Christian Preparing for College” →

The Story of Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe)

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The Story of Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe) is a redemption story. Jane Roe, of course, is the name of the plaintiff used in the case that challenged the Texas abortion law. It went all the way up to the US Supreme Court, and, in 1973, Roe v. Wade overturned all the state laws that made abortion illegal.  Continue reading “The Story of Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe)” →