For the actor, Ethan Hawke, who left his wife to marry the nanny, monogamy is inappropriate to the human species: “People have such a childish view of monogamy and fidelity. “He’s cheated so he’s bad, she’s cheated so she’s bad”, as opposed to a recognition that our species is not monogamous.” Hawke’s remarks make two points. First, what is morally justifiable is based on what is observed. Lots of people do it, therefore it is morally justifiable. The problem with this is that there are many things we all do that are not morally justifiable. Everyone is prone to lying and, I dare say, everyone has lied at some time. Yet…
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Penn and Theism
Penn Jillette, magician and materialist, has a book recommendation: the Bible, a book, he suggests, “by a bunch of guys in the desert.” And, advises Penn, “if you’re considering becoming an atheist, read the Bible from cover to cover. No study guides, no spins, just read it.” The consequence, he says, is fairly certain: “Sometime between when God tells Abraham to kill his son and when Jesus tells everyone to put him before their families, you’ll be an atheist.” The problem is that if one is already considering atheism as a viable option, one is already predisposed to deny the truth of the Bible. When one reads it in unbelief,…
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Focus and Love
Our culture has bestowed on us an axiom – focus on one another and love oneself. This is revealed in the rise of the selfie, the self-aggrandizing of our own vanity, the self-love Paul speaks of as a mark of the last days (2 Tim 3). It is also what is behind the focus we have on one another, our tendency to gossip about, judge and categorize one another, to check out each others’ clothes, style, taste and achievements. It was the same problem in the early church. Paul writes to Timothy to encourage him to deal with the problem: I desire then that in every place the men should…
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Numbers Need Worldviews
1+1=2. What has this got to do with worldview? Surely math has no need of a worldview, 1+1=2 in any worldview. Roy Clouser argues that 1+1=2 might be true in any worldview, but why it is true varies tremendously. Clouser considers the options and spots a mischievous assumption – all mathematical theories depend on a religious assumption. To see this, Clouser asks us to consider what a number is. There are two main approaches to this question (Clouser has a few more, but I will focus on a couple for the purposes of brevity). The first option is to say that numbers are real things in another dimension of reality.…
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Hating Sin and Loving People is Only Possible if Christianity is True
What worldview, apart from Christianity, can coherently account for, explain and oblige hatred for sin and love for a sinner? Answer: not one. This cliche has been the standard response of the church to issues such as gay marriage. It attempts to articulate that while the church opposes sinful actions that does not mean we oppose people in the same way. Its significance is not that it sounds reasonable, but that it is possible at all. How could it be that the sin of a person can been opposed, hated even, yet the person can be deeply loved at the same time by the same person? It is possible because…
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Learning Conditions
There are three conditions necessary for human learning. First, it must be possible, in principle, for human beings to obtain knowledge. They must be able to come to true beliefs. Second, it must be possible for human beings to make sense of experience; the world must be intelligible. Third, it must be possible for human beings to communicate with one another. A teacher has to be able to impart knowledge to the student. The question is: what reality would provide all three conditions? Answer: the God of the Bible. First, God is omniscient. Since God knows all things, past, present and future, God cannot be mistaken about anything. God defines…
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What the World Needs Now
We are almost certainly on the brink of a post-Christian Western culture. In Almost Christian, Kenda Creasy Dean paints a bleak picture of youth culture and its relationship to the church: “American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith–but it does not concern them very much, and it is not durable enough to survive long after they graduate from high school” (3). I want to provide some practical strategies that are not only focused on how we lead our young in the faith, but in how we ourselves carry and practice our faith. Here are six strategies for passing on the faith: Strategy #1 – Fill in the worldview blanks Alasdair MacIntyre,…
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The Real Exorcist
Apparently the writer of The Exorcist had no idea that anyone would find his book scary. He wrote it because he thought a story needed to be told. A real story. You can listen to the entire interview here. The reality behind stories of demon possession is largely ignored in our culture. We explain everything in terms of the physical and the psychological. Halloween is, in part, an attempt to make light of such evil realities, at least to turn them into novelties driven by the entertainment industry. Christians, on the other hand, are committed to the belief that there is more than meets the eye in our world. We believe that…