Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 90

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What You'll Need Most to Continue to Engage Atheists

Can you love the kind of person who says this?

There is perhaps no greater contribution one could make to contain and perhaps even cure faith than removing the exemption that prohibits classifying religious delusions as mental illness. The removal of religious exemptions from the DSM would enable academicians and clinicians to bring considerable resources to bear on the problem of treating faith, as well as on the ethical issues surrounding faith-based interventions. In the long term, once these treatments and this body of research is refined, results could then be used to inform public health policies designed to contain and ultimately eradicate faith. (Peter Boghossian A Manual for Creating Atheists (Kindle Locations 3551-3555), quoted here.)

Those aren’t just words of disagreement, they’re dangerous calls to action that, if enough people were convinced to believe them in the future, would cause Christians—think specifically of yourself and the people you love—to suffer. Maybe you could love atheists like this for a while, while your passion and hope are strong, but not forever. Not on your own.

We all need to take seriously our need for God’s supernatural work in and through us, if we’re going to persevere in apologetics. Are you diligently pleading with Him for this?

What is needed is love in three interconnected areas: Love among your fellow Christians, which encourages and builds up your love for God, who provides you with His supernatural love for others.

Our love for God drives us to honor Him by drawing more and more worshippers into His presence along with us. Our God-provided love for those we seek to convince keeps us acting in a way that reflects our message, making us a parable of God’s grace for them. And the love of the Church strengthens and stabilizes our love for God.

Without the foundation of church fellowship, worship, prayer, and God’s most excellent gift of love, we won’t persevere. Are you neglecting these?

What Does It Mean to Have Conversational Character?

Alan explains what it means to have good character when engaging in conversations regarding ethics, faith, and values. 

 

Even Setting Up Your Desk Can Be an Act of Beauty and Significance

I just finished reading Matt Perman’s short e-book, How to Set Up Your Desk: A Guide to Fixing a (Surprisingly) Overlooked Productivity Problem. I found it to be not only helpful, but also motivating—his passion for doing good work for the glory of God made me excited to get to work (at my newly organized desk).

His reminder at the end of the book that there is real significance in your work (whatever that work is) is worth reading:

When we think about productivity systems and tactics such as how we set up our desks, it’s easy to focus on the benefits to us. And, that’s important.

But there is something more that we often overlook. As the apostle Paul shows us, God calls us to be abundant in doing good works (Ephesians 2: 10; 1 Corinthians 15: 58). Unfortunately, we often fall into the thinking that good works are only rare and special things that we do, like going to Africa on a missions trip or volunteering at a soup kitchen.  

But in reality, as the apostle Paul also shows, good works are not just rare and special things that we do. They are anything that we do in faith. Consequently, the arena for most of our good works is not chiefly the mission field, but rather our workplaces and homes.  

The things that we do all day long while we are being productive and, yes, at our desks, are all good works if we do them out of faith in Christ for the good of others.  

That is very encouraging! It also transforms the meaning of the things we do every day— infusing them with great significance and opportunity.  

A good desk setup, then, is not only nice in itself; it is also an opportunity to increase our effectiveness in serving others. By having a good desk setup you can get more done in less time, and with less friction and frustration….

If you see everything you are already doing at work and life as a way of serving others, you can turn even very mundane things like the way you set up your desk into avenues for experiencing great meaning and bringing surprising benefit to others.

(Matt’s full-length book on productivity is What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done.)

How We Glorify God by Sleeping

Too often when I’ve been busy, my sleep has been the first thing I cut back on. But after reading a post by David Murray on “50 Good Reasons to Sleep Longer,” wherein he lists (among others) the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual consequences of sleep deprivation, I started to reassess my attitude towards sleep.

I realized that I often view it as a luxury that needs to be sacrificed if I’m to serve God as fully as possible. I might even feel guilty when I give in to it instead of trying to do “just one more thing.” I’ve tried to force myself to live with less and less of it in an attempt to be more productive. The result is that I have, of late, seen more than a few of those “50 reasons” creeping into my day-to-day life.

Is it okay to sleep? Here’s what Jason McMartin had to say in “How Can Sleep Bring Glory to God?”

We glorify God by making known his greatness. Human sleep illuminates God’s nature by means of contrast and difference. Humans must sleep and can die if they do not. God’s sleeplessness shows his independence; our sleepfulness reveals our dependence. We cannot not sleep; God cannot sleep. God is blessed in himself, which includes his self-existence and independence. He has the source of life and joy in himself (1 Thess. 1:9; Ps. 36:9; John 1:3–4; Jer. 32:36–41; Zeph. 3:17) and is in need of nothing to possess these things. Sleep brings glory to God by showing that we are not blessed in ourselves and must receive blessing from God’s hand. If we are to possess existence, life, joy or anything at all, we must receive them from God as gifts of grace. Appropriately then, we glorify God in sleep without being able to help it. Sleep shows my creatureliness in contrast to the Almighty Creator who gives me life….

In Scripture, trust emerges as the basic theme concerning the spiritual significance of sleep…. Psalm 127 expresses trust in God for success in one’s endeavors of building a house, guarding a city and growing a family. Sleepless activity will not ensure that our efforts will be rewarded. Jesus models trust for us by sleeping in the midst of a storm (Mark 4:35–41). The Good Shepherd causes his sheep to lie down in places of abundance and security (Ez. 34:14–15; Ps. 23; Mark 6:39; John 10:1-18); submission to that guidance and provision is an expression of trust.

It’s more than okay to sleep. It’s more than okay to stop working at night, though there’s no end to what could be done for the sake of God’s kingdom. Sleeping is more than just the way God designed us to function; it’s actually a daily confession of our own limitations, our dependence on God, and our trust in Him to run the world.

We don’t just glorify God by working, we glorify Him by sleeping.

George Cuvier – Zoologist, Biologist, and Christian

George Cuvier launched modern vertebrate paleontology. He originated the major classification of living things based on the nervous system: Vertebrata, Articulata, Mollusca, and Radiata. He also proved persuasively that animals did go extinct, which was doubted at the time. He was a Christian who believed God had created the world with all the variety of living things and that all modern species descended from their original pairs.

Cuvier believed that all living things existed in their essential forms without significant evolutionary change, and organisms are functional wholes. He rejected common descent and evolution because any change in form would destroy the functional whole. Cuvier thought that the functional signs of an organism could be detected in any part, and he had an unusual ability to accurately reconstruct animals from small remaining pieces. He also studied strata extensively and would entertain audiences by examining the exterior of a rock that contained a fossil and accurately predicting what they would find when workmen chiseled away to expose the remains inside.

Cuvier began his career as the tutor for the son of a wealthy man, but was invited to move to Paris and appointed to the Napoleonic University of France. He served in various roles throughout his career, spanning Napoleon, three kings, and revolution. He was considered to possess one of the finest minds of his time.

Further reading

Michaelson: Gay Culture Will Affect Marriage, Not the Other Way Around

In “Were Christians Right about Gay Marriage All Along?” Jay Michaelson asks a question that’s currently dividing the country: “What if gay marriage really will change the institution of marriage, shifting conceptions around monogamy and intimacy? On the other hand, what if the domesticating institution of marriage changes—and even erases—the more libertine tendencies of gay culture?”

Michaelson points out that both “ultra-conservatives” and “radical liberationists” oppose same-sex marriage—conservatives because they fear it will change the institution in fundamental ways, and liberationists because they fear it won’t: “[N]ormalizing marriage is a narrowing, rather than an expanding, of sexual possibility,” and, “If your agenda is liberation, then the vision of same-sex marriage, in which gays become domesticated and live happily ever after, is a kind of nightmare.”

But Michaelson thinks the liberationists need not fear. His prediction falls on the side of same-sex marriage changing the institution, and he supports that as a good thing:

[T]here is some truth to the conservative claim that gay marriage is changing, not just expanding, marriage. According to a 2013 study, about half of gay marriages surveyed (admittedly, the study was conducted in San Francisco) were not strictly monogamous. 

This fact is well-known in the gay community—indeed, we assume it’s more like three-quarters. But it’s been fascinating to see how my straight friends react to it. Some feel they’ve been duped: They were fighting for marriage equality, not marriage redefinition….

What would happen if gay non-monogamy—and I’ll include writer Dan Savage’s “monogamish” model, which involves extramarital sex once a year or so—actually starts to spread to straight people? ... Is non-monogamy one of the things same-sex marriage can teach straight ones, along with egalitarian chores and matching towel sets?...

Maybe instead of jealousy, non-monogamous couples will cultivate “compersion” to take pleasure in their partners’ sexual delight.

His conclusion:

Notice, by the way, that the ultra-conservatives and the radical liberationists share the same vision of LGBT liberation. Whether as dream or nightmare, both see it as destroying conventional notions of church and state. The only question is whether same-sex marriage will speed or slow the process. And, of course, whether it’s for better or for worse.

The mainstream LGBT movement, meanwhile, still insists that neither of these futures will come to pass. Don’t worry, they say, we’re not out to smash anything. 

Who’s right?  Only time will tell….

[I]f I had to predict, I’d go with a gradual realization of the conservative nightmare—only it won’t be a nightmare, and plenty of straight people will thank us for it. Maybe gays will preserve marriage precisely by redefining, expanding, and reforming it—and maybe then it can be palatable to progressives, as one of a multitude of options.

If any liberals or conservatives who supported same-sex marriage feel they’ve been duped, it’s only because they weren’t listening to those who explained the consequences of detaching marriage from two complementary sexes whose union completes “one flesh” and creates new life. Marriage is monogamous because two complete the union. Marriage is permanent because that union creates children who need to be raised.

Other unions do not complete the human reproductive system and create children, therefore monogamy and permanence are not central. Rather, what’s central is the sexual and emotional fulfillment of the participants, and who’s to say there’s one best way to accomplish that? Therefore, the radical activists seek “liberation”—the freedom to seek their own fulfillment however they see fit. No boundaries, no rules, no societal expectations. Each person acting as his own god, defining for himself what it means to be human.

So once again we’re back to the truth that sexual expression is a worldview issue. Those who believe in God will always be at odds with those who believe they are gods. Will being their own gods, remaking themselves in any image they like, make them happy? Will society flourish with their view of sexuality and marriage?

I say with great sorrow, no.

First-Century Synagogue Discovered in Magdala

The decision of the Rev. Juan M. Solana to build a retreat center in Galilee has led to an interesting archaeological find: “the presumed hometown of Mary Magdalene and an ancient synagogue where experts say Jesus may well have taught.” From the New York Times:

All that remained before construction could begin in earnest was to carry out a salvage dig on the site, a routine requirement in Israel. The Roman Catholic Church and the archaeologists dispatched by the Israel Antiquities Authority did not expect to find anything significant, and intended to get the dig over with as quickly and cheaply as possible.

But their spades struck history only a little more than a foot below the surface: a stone bench that, it soon became evident, was part of the remains of a synagogue from the first century, one of only seven from the Second Temple period known to exist, and the first to be found in Galilee. A local coin found in a side room of the synagogue was dated from the year 29 — when Jesus is thought to have been alive….

The site of the dig was only about five miles from Capernaum, a known center of Jesus’ activities.

Soon it was clear that the site was not just near Magdala; this was Magdala. The dig went on to uncover an ancient marketplace and a separate area of rooms with adjacent water pools, presumably used for producing the salty cured fish that Magdala was famous for; a large villa or public building with mosaics, frescoes and three ritual baths; a fishermen’s neighborhood, scattered with ancient hooks and other equipment; and a section of a first-century harbor….

The ancient synagogue had some unusual features, including an ornately engraved stone block that archaeologists say was probably used as a table for reading the Torah. It is carved with columns and arches, a seven-branched menorah with vessels for wine and oil to each side, a 12-leaf rosette and chariots of fire. The stone appears to be a miniature of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed in the year 70, adorned with symbols also meant to commemorate the First Temple.

To learn more about the discovery, here’s an Issues, Etc. interview with historian Paul Maier.

Will Signs and Wonders Follow All Who Believe?

Greg offers an explanation of John 14:12. 

How to Avoid Making the Worship Leader the Performer

Jamie Brown gives some good advice on how worship leaders can avoid “performancism”—that is, an atmosphere of “the worship leader as the performer. The congregation as the audience. The sanctuary as the concert hall”—while leading congregational singing:

Sing songs people know (or can learn easily). Sing them in congregational keys. Sing and celebrate the power, glory, and salvation of God. Serve your congregation. Saturate them with the word of God. Get your face off the big screen (here’s why). Use your original songs in extreme moderation (here’s why). Err on the side of including as many people as possible in what’s going on. Keep the lights up. Stop talking so much. Don’t let loops/lights/visuals become your outlet for creativity at the expense of the centrality of the gospel. Point to Jesus. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t sing songs with bad lyrics or weak theology. Tailor your worship leading, and the songs you pick, to include the largest cross-section of your congregation that you can. Lead pastorally.

You’re not reading the ramblings of a curmudgeony guy complaining about all the new-fangled things the kids are doing these days, with their drums and tom-toms and electric geetars. You’re reading the heart-cry of a normal guy who’s worried about what worship leaders are doing to themselves and their congregations. People are tuning out and giving up and just watching.

Read the rest of his post, and for more, see my previous post on this subject, “The Art of Leading Congregational Worship.”

(HT: Tim Challies)