A great read

In 2008 Timothy Keller wrote The Reason for God. It became a best-selling book, addressing reasons to believe in the Christian faith. I recently reread the book and want to share some of the author's points that make it so powerful.

He first tackles major objections to Christianity. Some have stated that there can't be just one true religion. They object to Christianity's claim of exclusivity, saying this religious view leads to wars. Is the answer to outlaw religions? Keller asks us to consider what happened when this was attempted. The result was not more peace and harmony but more oppression -- look at Soviet Russia, Communist China, and other atheistic regimes.

Many people try to water down such exclusive claims by suggesting that all major religions are equally valid and basically teach the same thing. They will use the story of the blind men and the elephant in which several blind men touch different parts of an elephant and give different answers of what an elephant really is. This illustration supposedly shows that all religions of the world each have a grasp of part of the truth of spiritual reality but not the entire picture. But the story is told from the point of view of someone who is not blind. How can the storyteller see in a world of the blind? Major religions do not teach the same thing if you take the time to examine their major beliefs.

Many believe it is arrogant to insist one religion is right. But this view itself is arrogant -- its claim is that the speaker has a better view of things than those of a religious persuasion. Of course, those who object to religious beliefs think they have a superior way to view things. Therefore, their view is also an exclusive claim about the nature of spiritual reality.

There are those who say public discourse should be secular, never religious, because religion-based positions are seen as controversial while secular reasoning is universal. However, it is impossible to leave religious views behind when we do any kind of moral reasoning at all. Religion is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about and what human beings should spend their time doing. Even the most secular individual has deep commitments about what it means to be human. Secular grounds for moral positions are no less controversial than religious grounds, and a very strong case, Keller says, can be made that all moral positions are at least implicitly religious. When you come into the public square, you cannot leave your convictions about ultimate values behind, no matter what your belief.

Keller agrees that religion can be a threat to world peace, but he says Christianity provides rich resources that can make its followers "agents for peace on earth." How? It provides a firm basis for respecting people of other faiths because Christians believe that all human beings are made in the image of God. He takes the reader back to the Greco-Roman world in which religious views seemed open and tolerant with everyone having his or her own God. However, this was a brutal culture. By contrast, early Christians, who seemed so exclusive with their claims, were remarkably welcoming to those that the culture marginalized -- different races and classes, the poor, women, the sick and dying. As Keller concludes this section, "at the very heart of their view of reality was a man who died for his enemies, praying for their forgiveness."

I would like to continue looking at The Reason for God in future blogs. If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of this book, you're missing a carefully reasoned argument that is a joy to read.

A vision statement we should all embrace

At our church, Emmanuel Faith, the board and pastor have released a vision statement for the year 2020. This sets up their view of what the church should emphasize over the next ten years. I wanted to tell you about one part that struck me as vitally important for Christians everywhere.

Here's the sentence that I wanted to focus on: "We will train all generations in our church family to know, explain and defend what we believe in order to engage and impact our culture for Christ."

Why is this important to me? Because this is the area of apologetics, a rational defense of the Christian faith. The church has awakened to the value of apologetics as part of a way to reach a secular age. Back in the 1980s a movie came out about Jesus that the church felt was unfair--The Last Temptation of Christ. What was the reaction? People went to the studios in L.A. to protest. Not a very intellectually satisfying thing to do, and not a way to show the world where the truth lay. Compare that to the Christian reaction to The Da Vinci Code, another in a long line of attempts to discredit Christianity. This time many good books poured forth, strongly rebutting the history and theology of Dan Brown. Christianity showed it had good reasons to oppose the message of this book.

Many Christian teens go off to college and walk away from their faith. Is it because the professor have some powerful insights that can wreck Christianity? Nope. Instead, these teens have never heard of how to defend their faith from false and misleading charges. They don't know there are good, sound, rational reasons to believe there is real truth, that there is a God, that the New Testament is reliable, that Jesus existed and did what the gospels say he did.

I'm glad the vision statement sees the importance of apologetics, which needs to be presented to "all generations" as the statement reads. It's not a philosophical exercise for pointy-headed older people. All Christians, no matter their age or scholarly abilities, should be shown how to think through their faith. Christianity, in the words of Greg Koukl, is "worth thinking about." I hope your church feels the same way.

Obamacare--a peek into the future

Another quick blog today. I saw in The Wall Street Journal that major companies like AT&T have made all sorts of calculations to see if they will continue providing health insurance for their employees. It turns out that under Obamacare it is cheaper for the companies to drop all their insurance plans, pay a penalty to the government, and force the employees to get their own policies. Will the employees be able to get quality insurance? Not if Massachusetts is any guide. Remember that state went Obama lite a few years ago. Employees there are not getting the same coverage they had before this state insurance plan kicked in. Hmm . . . I thought Obama told us we could keep our current policies if we liked them--guess again.

J. P. Moreland

This is going to be a record-breaking short blog. Tonight J. P. Moreland will be speaking at Emmanuel Faith Church. If you've never heard him, try to come out at 7 p.m.. If you can't make it, the church web site (efcc.org) will have his presentation for you to listen to later this week.

I would suggest that you try to read some of his books if you want a challenging, rational defenses of the Christian faith. He's awesome. Let me know if you would like suggestions of which Moreland books to read. You won't be sorry.

Secularism's ongoing debt to Christianity--an atheist perspective

On his radio show (Stand to Reason), Greg Koukl mentioned a powerful essay by an atheist. The title was different than what I expected from a non-believer: "Secularism's Ongoing Debt to Christianity." Doesn't sound like Christopher Hitchens, does it? I want to explore his points in some detail in the future, but for now here's a good response from a website (rustylime.com).


In his recent post in the online journal American Thinker called “Secularism Ongoing Debt to Christianity,” Secular Atheist and author John D. Steinrucken made quite a surprising admission. One only need to read the title of the article to see that what followed was a drastic departure from the normal anti-religious rhetoric coming from more prominent Atheists and Secularists. And what a change indeed. Rather than claiming that “religion poisons everything,” Steinrucken actually asserts that religion, more specifically the Judeo-Christian conviction, actually is the efficient cause for the wide-spread liberty and freedom that secularism has enjoyed in the West since its inception. Not only does he assert that Secularism was fostered in what could loosely be called “Christendom”, but actually that the fate of Western Secularism is intertwined with the survival of the Judeo-Christian worldview in the West as well. As goes the latter, so goes the former as it were.

What is most striking about his article is the forthright admission of the inability of Secularism to ground any kind of moral standard. This has been a topic of interest on RL for quite some time now, and on this, Steinrucken seems to be on the side of the faithful. Score one for the home team. Now, before all my fellow theists get too elated, Steinrucken is not making the case that such morals are REAL, only that the BELIEF in objective morals, such as can only be grounded by religious convictions about the justice of God, objective truth, and the real and universal value of human persons, is pivotal to the survival of a free Western society.

To that end he says, "Those who doubt the effect of religion on morality should seriously ask the question: Just what are the immutable moral laws of secularism? Be prepared to answer, if you are honest, that such laws simply do not exist! The best answer we can ever hear from secularists to this question is a hodgepodge of strained relativist talk of situational ethics. They can cite no overriding authority other than that of fashion. For the great majority in the West, it is the Judeo-Christian tradition which offers a template assuring a life of inner peace toward the world at large -- a peace which translates to a workable liberal society."

Well put. Later he even goes so far as to say, “Secularism has never offered the people a practical substitute for religion.” He briefly alludes to the failed attempt at Secular utopias that ended up causing some of the worst crimes against humanity ever perpetrated in the history of mankind. Those secular attempts for utopia, “when actually put to the test, have not merely come to naught. Attempts during those two centuries to put into practice utopian visions have caused huge sufferings. “ Sadly, we have no want of examples that affirm his statement – Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Hitler’s Germany, Hoxha’s Albania, Castro’s Cuba, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and on and on. It is no small thing that the most secular century has been, hands down, the bloodiest century in human history – a fulfillment of Nietzsche’s dark prediction that the death of belief God would mark the beginning of the most violent era in human history. People would replace their faith in God with faith in the state – “barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods” as he called them.

We get a sense that Steinrucken has read Nietzsche and has imagined the same fate. What most people don’t know is that Nietzsche did not only make a prediction about the 20th century, but also the 21st - and it doesn’t get any better. Nietzsche saw that the 20th century would at the very least have some residual moral sentiment left over from the 19th century and such a sentiment would curb the barbarism. The 21st century however would have no such sentiment. He predicted a “total eclipse of values.” If it was so easy for the Secular Utopias to marginalize, then criminalize, then euthanize vast swaths of their citizens even with residual values, how much more easy will it be to do so when values are entirely passé? However, where Nietzsche saw the inevitable, Steinrucken desires to avoid such a societal collapse.

Here again I must remind my fellow theists not to get too excited. Steinrucken is not advocating for some widespread conversion to faith. His point is that it is in the secularists’ best interest to see to it that the moral grounding found in the Judeo-Christian tradition is preserved. This is because should secularism do away with that foundation, and then one day find itself in disfavor and itself under the thumb of some radical ideologue hell-bent on purging society of the godless and the infidel, the secularist will have no one to defend them because no one will be left to decry the real injustice of it all.

I will end where he ends, “It is not critical that they themselves believe, only that they should publicly hold in high esteem the institutions of Christianity and Judaism, and to respect those who do believe and to encourage and to give leeway to those who, in truth, will be foremost in the trenches defending us against those who would have us all bow down to a different and unaccommodating faith.”

Why many of us are fed up with the mainstream media

Those of us who are critics of mainstream media have yet another reason for our low opinion of them. I was reading in The Wall Street Journal about the recent planned bombing in New York’s Broadway area. We were lucky to dodge another bullet there when the concoction failed to explode. What was interesting was the information that was leaked—apparently, officials are seeking a courier who helped get the suspect money.

Use of a courier seems old-fashioned in this day of wire transfers of money. But it all goes back to the pinnacle of mainstream media—the New York Times. Back in 2006 this influential newspaper disclosed, on its front page no less, a highly classified government program for monitoring electronic international money transfers through what is known as the Swift system.

Keep in mind that this monitoring violated no law. So the paper wasn’t letting the public in on some devious plot by the Bush administration to deprive us of all our liberties (sound familiar?). Instead, it was leaked and reported simply as a way to titillate readers for fun and to relieve them of boredom. Nobody at the Times was concerned about possible harm this revelation might cause. Is anyone surprised that terrorists took note and changed their methods? They have since resorted to the use of physical "couriers," making it much harder to trace terrorist financing.

So, here we go again. If the mainstream media are not acting as cheerleaders for those they love (President Obama comes to mind), they recklessly make charges, tear down those they disagree with, and, in this case, display breathtaking stupidity in aiding our enemies.

Some thoughts on real education

I came across some good quotations having to do with education. These have to do with real education, not the politically correct junk offered by so many schools and colleges today. Enjoy.



Learning is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust . . . never fear . . . and never dream of regretting.

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t.

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling but wood that needs igniting.

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

Information cannot replace education.

Learning is not a spectator sport.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Nothing is more powerful and liberating than knowledge.

Education costs money, but so does ignorance.

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.

The Greek financial situation--why should we care?

I've been ignoring the Greek financial crisis. After all, it's Greece and it's financial. Who cares? My eyes glaze over. Then I read an article by Larry Kudlow, a financial expert, who always writes clearly and connects the financial world with my world. I edited some of the article to keep it short. So, here it is. Notice the second half where he connects the Greek problem to ours here in the United States. We need to learn from this mess.

"The ink was barely dry on the $150 billion European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout of Greece, when world stock markets tanked. Financial analysts are concerned that the bailout money won't be enough to cover Greece's borrowing needs from its out-of-control budget deficit.
Additionally, there are new worries that the Greek debt contagion will spread to Spain and elsewhere in Europe. The looming specter of debt default and deflation is heavy in the air for investors worldwide . . .

Margaret Thatcher used her budget ax [to get out of Britain's similar situation years ago]. That's something neither Greece nor Spain appears capable of implementing in a sustained way. Thatcher also reminded us that the problem with socialist governments is that they finally run out of other people's cash.

What's more, while Greece and Spain have moderate 30 percent business tax rates, lower than rates in the U.S., their combined personal and VAT tax rates come to about 60 percent. Team Obama take note: These are anti-growth tax policies.

Indeed, the debt follies of Europe and the bankruptcy of the European entitlement state should be a lesson for Barack Obama's Washington, where overspending and borrowing have reached absurdly grand heights. As a share of gross domestic product, U.S. debt is projected to move toward 100 percent in the wake of the new Obamacare entitlements. That's near the 125 percent debt ratio of Greece.

And just like Greece, U.S. government union-worker benefits, which run 50 percent above private-sector equivalents, are bankrupting federal, state and local budgets. They're also spawning a massive voter revolt against big-government debt that will bear fruit this November in the tea-party midterm elections . . .

Call it a spend-and-borrow debt mess. A pox on all your houses, at least until financial-market and voter discipline force the dimwitted politicians to radically change course."


Let's hope we can learn from this, make difficult choices, vote in people who share our concerns, and follow through by sticking with a plan to restore our finances. Our children will thank us for it.

Abortion advocates--where did the women go?

The Wall Street Journal carried an interesting piece on the abortion issue. Something fascinating is going on when it comes to support for abortion among the young, especially among young women.

The article refers to a pro-life web site called LifeSiteNews.com. Surprisingly, the pro-life movement in America is growing in leaps and bounds, attracting young, zealous women to defend the unborn in droves

Even the president of the well-known, pro-choice organization NARAL has admitted as much. Nancy Keenan recently told Newsweek that she considers herself a member of the "postmenopausal militia"--a phrase that captures the situation of pro-abortion leaders who are aging across the board, including the leadership of Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women. Newsweek's Sarah Kliff notes that "these leaders will retire in a decade or so."

Keenan also was troubled by the enthusiastic and huge March for Life held in Washington, D.C. According to Newsweek, she is troubled that such passion has faded among the youth on her side of the movement.
"I just thought, my gosh, they are so young," Keenan said about stumbling on this year's March for Life in Washington. "There are so many of them, and they are so young."

The report on the pro-life web site cites a NARAL survey finding that, in LSN's words, "while 51 percent of pro-life voters under 30 considered abortion a 'very important' voting issue, only 26 percent of abortion supporters in the same demographic felt similarly."

What's going on to create this seismic shift in opinion on abortion? LSN, not surprisingly, attributes it to the moral power of the antiabortion cause. Newsweek and NARAL actually make some concessions to this point of view. Kate Michelman, who once headed NARAL, tells the magazine, for instance, that ultrasound technology "has clearly helped to define how people think about a fetus as a full, breathing human being."

The Wall Street Journal says there is another explanation. They refer to "The Roe Effect," which says pro-choice women have aborted their offspring, creating no future women who could echo their mothers' opinions.

Whatever the case, it's refreshing to hear of at least one societal marker that has become more traditional. If this can change, so can other troubling opinions that hold sway right now. This is no time to give up on our country.