Apologetics
"I don't have enough faith to be an atheist."Frank Turek
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Life After Death
It’s a general consensus in Christianity that Christ was indeed “raised from the dead.” This is referred to as The Resurrection, of course, and is certainly the turning point of history on which lay the entire foundation of the Christian Church. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is futile and your faith is empty. 1 Corinthians 15:14 NET Remarkably, there are many who believe in the resurrection, and of everlasting life in Jesus, yet struggle with the idea of or reported claims of near-death experiences (NDE). How do these things relate? Well, when we talk of “life after death,” we’re typically asking about one’s ideas or…
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And What Shall Remain?
Remove the dross from the silver, and material for the silversmith will emerge. Proverbs 25:4 NLT Dross refers to the impurities within a metal that can be separated from the pure element by extreme heat. The oldest method of gold purification requires the metal to be made molten, at which point all other non-gold metals and materials float to the surface and can be easily removed. Whenever we attempt to “purify” something, we have to put it through some type of process to make it pure for some purpose. And while our definition of “pure” may vary depending on the usage, we typically mean something that comprises 100% (or pretty…
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New Beginnings
In my book, So What’s the Big Deal About Communion? I show how intrinsically connected the Last Supper, and by extension the Lord’s Supper, is with the celebration of Passover. God had selected this very specific event to tie into His plan for salvation, as the first Passover was the first iteration of this plan designed to culminate with all of what we celebrate now on Resurrection Sunday (Easter). While we realize that we are ultimately celebrating both the Last Supper and the Resurrection each week we gather at church for worship and communion, this Holy Week provides an opportunity for us to extend over the course of seven days…
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The First Communion
A couple of years ago, I got in my head the idea of investigating the true meaning and purpose of Communion (The Lord’s Supper) beyond my own elementary understanding of it, and ignoring the different traditions that surround it. Sure, we all understand and appreciate this mirroring of the Last Supper on the night before Jesus’ death on the Cross, and how sharing in it as a church body reminds us of that Cross and the suffering Jesus underwent on our behalf. We get it. But for me, this wasn’t good enough, because the way the Catholic church teaches and practices it, both in substance and form, differs from how…
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A Mistaken Identity
Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? These are the three questions that every human asks of the cosmos at one point or another. We need to understand our origins, our purpose, and whether there is hope for a future beyond this life. While we may ask these questions individually at different points in life, they are remarkably interconnected, and we cannot answer either of the second two without first understanding the first. And yet so many often start with the third question, wondering if its answer would some how bring resolution to the other two. Where am I going? This question is most…
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This Isn’t the Way It’s Supposed to Be
It breaks my heart to see and hear so many who don’t understand why the world is the way it is. Because God has set eternity on every human heart Ecclesiastes 3:11, every man, woman and child yearns for a place called Eden (by one name or another), and to live at peace in a restored and perfect world. Because this desire is so strong, those who don’t fully understand God’s nature either blame him for the way the world is (because he’s not a good god and he’s not fixing it), or feel that this imperfect world is simply evidence against his authorship. A most common complaint the world…
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Mary, Did You Know?
Mary, did you know that the Three Wise Men never made it to Bethlehem that night? The Christmas Story, along with the Nativity scene (however ethnically incorrect those participants may be), always tells the story that includes the three wise men, or “magi” as the later translations of the Bible write it. So let’s take a look.
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Hope Is Peace
I was recently in Houston with my family, and on our last day of our trip, we were planning to visit the NASA Space Center there. Early that morning, I went out for a walk to engage God in conversation. During that time, I began considering and praying for all those involved in the Space Program, from the beginning until now, those who have lived and for those who have given their lives to the adventure of discovering the truth through space exploration. Like so many adventurers before them, in so many different ways and purposes, each individual on this earth who has pursued the unknown with the hope of…
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The Science of Speaking Truth
Too often, our own pride and the desire to have a meaningful impact on the world around us affect our objectivity, and we find ourselves providing more opinion and subjective narrative than we do truthful insight and objective perspectives. So how can those to whom I speak know the difference? How do they know if what I speak is the truth or just my opinion? Every day they are bombarded with falsehoods and half-truths that they feel obliged to accept. How can I possibly influence them in the right way if I use only the same tools the rest of the world does? In order to ground our investigation in…
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Why Can’t God Abolish Evil?
Mankind was charged with leadership and dominion of all the animal kingdom. He was not just given authority and power, but responsibility. Many may mention, if not too casually, that freewill—the human ability to choose right and wrong—was part of the package. I agree, it sounds too “convenient” for Christians to simply say that freewill is the reason for evil and suffering. But more importantly, that’s not really the question. The question many ask is, “In the face of evil, oppression and suffering, torture, mayhem, human trafficking, child molestation, murder, terrorism, etc., how could such a “loving God” allow all this evil to exist? Why doesn’t he raise a hand…
