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 beliefs regarding the afterlife or, more specifically, Heaven and hell.
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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 darn close) of a particular component. In the above example, pure gold is 24 karat, with anything less than that being a mixture of gold and other materials.
In the gospel of Matthew, John the Baptist says of Jesus,
“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Matthew 3:12 NIV -
New Beginnings
In my book, The First Communion: The Making of the Last Supper 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 that which we normally share in the course of a few hours. It is in this vein I share with you this excerpt from chapter 11: Six Days of Preparation.
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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 the Lutheran church teaches and practices it, which differs significantly from how the non-denominational (often evangelical) and other Protestant churches practice it (without much instruction)—not to mention the frequency of its practice, be it daily, weekly, monthly, special occasions, or never.
While I knew it wouldn’t be particularly useful for me to investigate those disparities, I did think it valuable to discover its true origins, according to Scripture, and try my best to understand the history and tradition behind the origins of the Last Supper (and Passover) itself, while discarding the traditions of the evolving Christian church beyond the first century, being able to examine more intimately how and why the first century Church believed, taught, and practiced it.
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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 often formed as “Is there life after death?” We all want to know whether or not an afterlife is hopeful, because the answer to that question allows us to reconcile the mysteries of the present. Our lives are chaos and can be pockmarked—if not filled—with tragedy and bad fortune. We can often feel we are victims of circumstance, unable to catch a break and unable to figure out why life is so difficult.
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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 over is “Why?” “Why did that happen?” “Why is this happening?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?” These are all variations of the same question, and expose a great lack of understanding of God’s power, grace, and love. Surprisingly, it’s the same question even the most devout Christian may ask during their own personal trials.
Those who believe in God may attempt to comfort others during hardship with words like, “It’s all part of God’s plan.” But this does not help to console, because it fails to answer the question, mostly because the one saying this doesn’t really believe it themselves. In fact, this statement stands in stark contradiction to God’s nature. And by declaring that it’s God’s plan for mankind, wildlife, and the environment to suffer and endure such pain and hardship, one sets God against Creation. And this couldn’t be further from the truth.
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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 discovery, has unwittingly preserved and encouraged the idea and the need for hope in this broken world.
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The Science of Speaking Truth
When my kids were teenagers, there were times when each had presented me with a need for help with algebra problems that were complex and based on mathematical formulas I hadn’t seen or used since high school.
At those times, I would try to conjure up some distant memory that might allow me to show the depth of my parental wisdom and knowledge, and impress my child by quickly demonstrating the solution. But the reality was always much more humbling (or humiliating), and I would quickly realize that I often (not always) had no ability to retrieve from my mind any methods for solving the problem at hand. Instead, I was forced to confess that I had no idea of how to solve that specific type of problem.
So what could I do when I didn’t remember the exact logic of the appropriate formula, or, more frequently, couldn’t remember the formula at all? How could I go about helping them in solving this complex equation? And most importantly, how could I ensure that I didn’t misguide them by giving them direction or suggestions that could hinder their ability to solve the problem on their own?
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.
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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 against it? Why doesn’t he just “fix it” all?”
