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July 22 - August 5, 2023
The question for the next generation is not How soon will religion die out? but Christianity or Islam?
This book aims to look closely at important questions through the lenses these friends have given me, and to share that experience with you.
to say that religion is bad for you is like saying, “Drugs are bad for you,” without distinguishing cocaine from life-saving medication.
explore seven counterintuitive biblical commands and how they relate to the findings of modern psychology.
It Really Is More Blessed to Give Than to Receive
Love of Money Disappoints
beyond a basic level of security, increased wealth is only slightly correlated with an increased sense of well-being.
Work Works When It’s a Calling
Christians are called to see work as part of their worship—whether they are designing a building or sweeping its floors.
We Really Can Be Happy in All Circumstances
Gratitude Is Good for Us
For the Christian, therefore, thankfulness is not just a positivity technique: it is a deep disposition toward a life-giving and life-saving God.
Self-Control and Perseverance Help Us Thrive
Forgiveness Is Foundational
Does this alignment prove that Christianity is true? Certainly not! Rather, it should raise a hundred questions in our minds—questions the chapters following will explore. But the positive effects of religious participation on our mental and physical health should give us pause before we buy the claim that religion poisons everything.
But while Christianity held a monopoly on Western culture, Western culture never held a monopoly on Christianity. Indeed, calling Christianity “Western” is like calling literacy “Western.” Western culture has undoubtedly been shaped by literacy, and Westerners have sought to impose literacy on others—often to the detriment of traditional living. But there are at least three reasons why no one in his or her right mind would claim that literacy is innately Western: first, literacy did not originate in the West; second, most literate people today are not Westerners; and third, it is frankly
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The idea that Christianity is a diversity-resistant, white Western religion of privilege is utterly irreconcilable with the New Testament.
Ants among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India,
“I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God: first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.”
Yale law professor and leading black public intellectual Stephen Carter has observed, there is “a difficulty endemic to today’s secular left: an all-too-frequent weird refusal to acknowledge the demographics of Christianity.”
King declared, “Any church that stands against integration and that has a segregated body is standing against the spirit and the teachings of Jesus Christ.”
American churches often fail to live up to the ideals of biblical diversity, both via lack of integration between black and white Americans and by portraying immigration as an erosion of America’s Christian identity.
A Passion for the Impossible: The Continuing Story of the Mission Hudson Taylor Began
When questions of truth carry life-and-death consequences, we see persuasion as an act of love.
the elephant paradigm creates more problems than it solves. Here are seven.
The Problem of Respect
the tale works only because the narrator is not blind.
“It’s often said that you should respect other people’s beliefs. But that’s wrong: what’s vital is that you respect other people.”
The Problem of Truth
The Problem of History
I have friends who were raised Christian but no longer believe. Some have been hurt by experiences in church. Others have lost faith in Christianity’s claims. Some are now agnostic; others atheist. I care about these friends, and I long for them to turn back to Jesus. But I would not dream of telling them that Christianity and atheism are two paths to the same truth. When they say they do not trust in Jesus, I respect them enough to believe them.
The Problem of Ethics
The Problem of Monotheism
The Problem of Jesus
Praveen Sethupathy, “My Name Means ‘Skillful,’” The Curator Magazine, March 4, 2013, http://www.curatormagazine.com/author/praveensethupathy/.
there are three problems with the claim that religion hinders morality.
The first problem is its lack of specificity.
The second problem with the claim that religion hinders morality is that it does not fit the data.
The third problem with the claim that religion hinders morality cuts deeper still. It assumes there is a universal measuring stick of morality, sized by self-evident truths to which all of us (Christian, atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jew) can assent.
“To live as a Christian,” she writes, “is a call to be part of this new, radical, creation. I am not passively awaiting a place in the clouds. I am redeemed by Christ, so now I have work to do.”
the Christian worldview offers a grounding for altruism and a reason to dare to believe that ultimate justice is more than a delusionary longing in the illusionary mind of the collection of atoms you mistakenly call “me.”
Central to this mythology is the aforementioned idea that the Crusades were an unprovoked attempt by Western Christians to force their faith on peace-loving Eastern Muslims. The truth is almost opposite. The Crusades were, in historian Robert Louis Wilken’s words, “a Christian counter offensive against the occupation of lands that had been Christian for centuries before the arrival of Islam.”5
But Marx’s dream looks like a tattered rag when held up against the violent and oppressive nightmare of Communism. Sixty-one million people killed in the former Soviet Union. Thirty-five million slaughtered in the People’s Republic of China. Combine these with the horrific democides and human rights abuses perpetrated by smaller Communist states (North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, and so on), and influential political scientist R. J. Rummel concludes: Of all religions, secular and otherwise, that of Marxism has been by far the bloodiest. . . . Marxism has meant bloody terrorism, deadly purges,
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Hitler’s belief in racial hierarchy was supported by many scientists of the day, both in Germany and abroad. This must make us cautious when people suggest that we can replace religion with science and expect a better world to emerge. Science is not designed to give us morals. It can help us build chemical weapons and chemotherapy drugs, but it cannot tell us whether and when to use them. As we saw in the last chapter, science cannot ground the belief that human beings should be valued equally.
I believe there are two primary reasons for the failure of supposedly Christian countries to live up to Jesus’s teaching.
First, we cannot assume that everyone who identifies as a Christian authentically is one—particularly in societies where claiming to follow Jesus is not a ticket to martyrdom but a path to power.
Second, the Bible teaches us to expect moral failure from Christians.
5. Robert Louis Wilken, “Christianity Face to Face with Islam,” First Things, January 2009, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/01/christianity-face-to-face-with-islam.
6. Thomas F. Madden, “The Real History of the Crusades,” Crisis, March 19, 2011, https://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/the-real-history-of-the-crusades.
But there are three other problems with the notion that the Galileo affair proves the triumph of science over Christianity.
