“Tolerance has come to mean that no one is right and no one is wrong and, indeed, the very act of stating that someone else’s views are immoral or incorrect is now taken to be intolerant (of course, from this same point of view, it is all right to be intolerant of those who hold to objectively true moral or religious positions). Once the existence of knowable truth in religion and ethics is denied, authority (the right to be believed and obeyed) gives way to power (the ability to force compliance), reason gives way to rhetoric, the speech writer is replaced by the makeup man, and spirited but civil debate in the culture wars is replaced by politically correct special-interest groups who have nothing left but political coercion to enforce their views on others.”
Category Archives: Culture
Same-Sex Marriage – How Should Christians Respond? (Video)
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Our culture is talking about Same-Sex Marriage. How should Christians respond?
*A quick note. Christians are not the ones who are driving this issue, but we do need to be prepared to have this conversation (1 Pet. 3:15). We are all broken and all of us are called to repent. The Gospel is good news for all of us, because we all need a Savior.
Should Christians be for Marriage Equality?
How do Christians respond to the top 12 toughest questions about homosexuality?
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Even Really Big Things (Like the Universe) Need an Explanation
The 18th Century intellectual G. W. Leibniz famously asked the fundamental question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (By the way, he co-discovered calculus…so you can blame him for that one!). In other words, our common sense intuition is that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence. Christian philosopher William Lane Craig offers a very helpful way of making this abstract concept concrete:
“Imagine that you’re hiking through the woods and you come across a translucent ball lying on the forest floor. You would naturally wonder how it came to be there. If one of your hiking partners said to you, “Hey, it just exists inexplicably. Don’t worry about it!” you’d either think that he was crazy or figure that he just wanted you to keep moving. No one would take seriously the suggestion that the ball existed there with literally no explanation. Now suppose you increase the size of the ball in this story so that it’s the size of a car. That wouldn’t do anything to satisfy or remove the demand for an explanation. Suppose it were the size of a house. Same problem. Suppose it were the size of a continent or a planet. Same problem. Suppose it were the size of the entire universe. Same problem. Merely increasing the size of the ball does nothing to affect the need of an explanation.”
Would this apply to God? No, because if He exists, He does so necessarily. But the universe is clearly contingent (i.e., did not “have to” exist of its own nature). This is a version of the cosmological argument for God’s existence. But if God made the universe, then who made God?
Want to explore the evidence for God further? Sean McDowell and I wrote a readable book that will introduce you to the existence of God (we cover science, philosophy, history, and the Bible). We also interview some leading Christian intellectuals in the book as well. We hope you will find it helpful. Learn more here.
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Why We Are Failing Our Students
We can’t just sit back and assume that just because a student goes to church or attends youth group that they are ready to follow Christ in today’s culture. Attendance isn’t cutting it; training is needed. And with it, a compelling vision of true education. 59% of Christian students losing their faith is unacceptable.
I am convinced that the prevailing approach to education in our society is doing a great disservice to students. As a culture we can do better but as Christians we must do better. Unfortunately, much of contemporary education has come to be identified with data acquisition.
[Tweet “”True education cannot sever the purpose for which we exist from who we are.””]
However, simply regurgitating facts does not mean that one is educated. The ability to look something up on Google or Wikipedia is useful to be sure and I am certainly thankful for the unprecedented access to information available today, but this ability is not to be confused or conflated with education.
In order to understand what it means to be educated, we need to answer a fundamental question—what is a human being for? If a human being is understood to be the result of a blind, random process that did not have him in mind, then strictly speaking there is no objective purpose (this is the contemporary Darwinian narrative).
But if a human being is specially created in the image of an essentially relational God, then education is about flourishing according to God’s design and for his glory. True education cannot sever the purpose for which we exist from who we are.
As Christians, we must resist the reductionism so common in our culture today. For as one of my professors put it one time, “education is not about testing well…but living well.” I’ve written a post about how to build a Christian worldview and I’ve also have attempted to make a start at recovering true integration for students in my book Welcome to College: A Christ-Follower’s Guide For the Journey. Here’s what some leading Christian thinkers are saying about it:
“Wow! What a book! Quite frankly, this is the book I’ve been waiting for the last forty years to give to college students. It is the single best volume I have ever read for preparing students for how to follow Jesus and flourish as his disciple in college.” – J.P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University
“Jonathan has both the intellectual resources as well as the practical experience to provide an effective students’ survival guide to university life. I’m impressed with the wide array of issues he discusses, from intellectual challenges to financial problems to sexual snares to getting enough sleep! All this is done in easily digestible bits for the student on the run.” – William Lane Craig, Philosopher, Theologian and Author, Reasonable Faith
“Unpacking biblical truths, Welcome to College is a treasure book of wisdom that will literally save lives and help build a culture of life.” – Kelly Monroe Kullberg, Author, Finding God Beyond Harvard: The Quest for Veritas (Founder of the Veritas Forum)
Thousands of parents and churches have already used Welcome to College as a gift for their high school graduates and it’s exciting to hear the stories of how God is using this book. It is gratifying to me as an author and my prayer is that many more students are encouraged and equipped by it in this year’s class.
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Article: Cotton Candy Christianity
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We Don’t Just Help Special Needs Children…They Help Us (Video)
Please take 3 minutes and watch this inspirational and sweet reminder of this precious little image bearer…
“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” – Genesis 1:27
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