Category Archives: Topics

December 14, 2013

Christmas Calculus

By John Paine

Christmas Calculus

 

I am thankful for the mechanism
that lifts anger off the rails of contention
and offers instead a calculus of peace.

Because it occurs to me
that the change in me
with respect to you
was modeled by Jesus Christ.

His equation for anger can be found
in the handbook for our self-obsessing culture—
a testable model for peace.

Because if we genuinely put our anger
next to Jesus Christ
it leads to forgiveness,
and no anger remains.

Absent anger, love can change the intractable,
and save the cost of cleaning up emotional fallout—
leaving energy for peace.

Because there is no peace in anger,
you and I desperately need
a Chi Rho to make it work—
and that’s why Christmas is so necessarily beautiful.
 
 

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December 10, 2013

Christmas Wars: Then and Now

By Clarke Morledge
The "War on Christmas"? Are we missing something here? Perhaps a look at church history might help.

The “War on Christmas”? Are we missing something here? Perhaps a look at church history might help.

It is that time of year again, December, when Christians in America face an annual existential crisis: Do you wish people a “Merry Christmas”… or not?

I must confess that I am not crazy about fighting amongst the shopping hordes at the mall, and the year after year pressure of finding the right gift can be really stressful. Sure, shopping online helps a teeny bit, but what I am talking about here is a more fundamental cultural anxiety. Increasingly over the past few years, I have heard Christians grumble throughout the month of December over how “they have taken Christ out of Christmas!” I have read angry letters in the local newspaper complaining how store operators are greeting customers more and more with the shallow and inadequate “Happy Holidays”. Where have the traditional nativity scenes at the community fire station gone? Have a “Joyous Winter Solstice”? What is that all about?

Folks. Let’s face it. We are moving more towards to a post-Christian society with every passing year.

Deal with it.

We could continue to get mired in frustration and disgust, or we can see this as a providential opportunity to reflect on what God is calling us to do as witnesses for the Gospel. What does this look like? Might I suggest some lessons from church history?
Continue reading

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December 3, 2013

Bible Secrets Revealed via the History Channel?

By Clarke Morledge
God took Enoch (Genesis 5:24). From Figures de la Bible, Gerald Hoet and others, 1728.

God took Enoch (Genesis 5:24). From Figures de la Bible, Gerald Hoet and others, 1728.

As I do not have cable TV, I never really get to watch the History Channel. But when some friends suggested that I check out the new History Channel series on the Bible Secrets Revealed, I thought I should investigate a little.

As it turns out, the History Channel does allow you to watch some of the previous episodes online fairly easily, at least for a limited time. I missed the window to see the first episode, “Lost in Translation“. However, I was able to view the next two episodes, “The Promised Land” and “The Forbidden Scriptures“. I will not attempt to give a full review but just offer some brief general observations and pointers to some resources for further study.

I like Bible documentaries because I always learn something from them, such as in this History Channel series, and it encourages me to dig deeper in the data even more for myself, even if I do not agree with everything presented. But what bothers me about some Bible documentaries is in the style of presentation and the overall narrative that the producers of the film are trying to convey. Genuine efforts to present views even handedly get unwittingly sidetracked by unexamined biases held by these documentary makers. Unfortunately, the History Channel’s latest film on this topic is no exception.
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December 1, 2013

The First Thanksgiving

By Clarke Morledge

I had a great Thanksgiving. How about you?

The turkey I ate was wonderful, just like what the Pilgrims ate….. or was it? Did they even have turkey to eat in 1621?

The study of American history is a tough thing to deal with for Christians. We are annoyed and quite accustomed to revisionists who want to exorcise Christianity out of America’s past. On the other hand, a lot of ideas about history that have been passed down to us over the generations do not always line up with the facts. Is there a responsible Christian way to approach our nation’s past?

Robert Tracy McKenzie, an historian at Wheaton College, has written a new book, The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History, that attempts to set the record straight (with a measure of humility with respect to the challenges to doing history) and still show us the Biblical and historical lessons that we can learn from our nation’s forebears.

Here is the book’s trailer and then a brief interview with the author addressing a question that many evangelical Christians merely assume to be true, “Were the Pilgrims just like us?”:

More discussion is available here at the Patheos Book Club.

Audio podcast with Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Society, interviewing McKenzie here.

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November 6, 2013

Evidence of Transformation

By John Paine

“It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”
 (1 Corinthians 15:44, NIV84)

Dinosaur at Toronto Airport

How come there are no dinosaurs in the Bible? I found this one at the Toronto airport.

After all of Clarke’s hard work leading up to our Facts & Faith symposium, I decided to see if I could help out by taking Veracity on the road—to look for evidence of agreement between science and faith. So…

Niagara Falls

Greetings from Niagara, Ontario! It’s very wet (and beautiful) here.

Old earth creationism, young earth creationism, theistic evolution, neo-Darwinism, naturalism, theism, atheism, science versus faith, science and faith—we’ve taken on quite a bit of material in the weeks leading up to the symposium. There seems to be no end to controversies surrounding these topics. Got it. But does any of this stuff really matter?

Bird at Niagara Falls

What are you thinking?

It is ironic that the three intramural Christian positions on creationism (young earth, old earth, and theistic evolution) all agree that the age of the earth is not essential to the salvation of anyone’s soul. So why does it matter? OK, let’s come at the issue from a less Christian perspective.

Suppose you are sharing your faith with someone who is unfamiliar with Christianity, or has doubts about the claims and content of the Bible. (If you’re not encountering people like this, might it be time to leave your monastery or otherwise get out and meet some real people?) Further suppose that your beliefs are not supported by contemporary science or scientific scholarship. Would you be willing to argue that “science is wrong?” It turns out that many Christians do indeed argue that science teaches things that are contrary to the Bible and that science is wrong. Welcome to the Bible versus science, an unnecessary either-or proposition. Continue reading

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