Fear and Trembling

In keeping with a Christmas tradition of mine, I wanted to share one of my favorite hymns, sung at a recent church service I attended.  I will also take the time to explain some of the lyrics.   The song I have chosen this year is “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence,” a solid performance of which can be found here .  This song takes much of its imagery from Isaiah Chapter 6 and Revelation Chapter 5 and Chapter 19 .  The hymn was probably written in 275 A. D. The first verse says: Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand; Ponder nothing earthly minded, For with blessing in His hand, Christ our God to earth descendeth, Our full homage to demand. These verses from John Chapter One come to mind:  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. ...

It's that time of year again.  Time to participate in the world’s largest Christmas project of its kind: Operation Christmas Child . The annual Samaritan’s Purse project is a favorite of many families, churches and groups.  They spread joy to millions of children around the world by filling shoeboxes with a “Wow!” item—like a doll or soccer ball—other fun toys, school supplies, hygiene items and notes of encouragement. I had the great privilege of going to Lima, Peru, in 2008 to help hand out some of those shoeboxes to children in need through local churches.  To read my story, follow this link  and read several posts from my trip.  It was an unforgettable experience. Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan’s Purse, an international Christian relief and evangelism organization headed by Franklin Graham . Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has delivered gift-filled shoeboxes to more than 124 million children in more than 150 countries a...

I hope that you have found this little series to be helpful.  I have outlined the reasons that I have chosen to be a Christian and to remain in the faith.  I have shared much of my own personal intellectual and emotional journey. The reasons given are not persuasive arguments for everyone. I pray that if you are a person who does not find them convincing that you will at least be motivated to explore other arguments and approaches. Some places to look on the internet are: www.str.org , www.ligonier.org , www.carm.org , and www.4truth.net .   Some helpful books include The Reason for God by Timothy Keller, Reasons to Believe by R. C. Sproul, Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham, and I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek.  These men differ on many theological issues, but their arguments for God’s existence and the truth of the Bible are sound.   ...

I was raised in a Baptist church in a small, West Tennessee town. Many times, I have heard the testimony of a person who has been radically and completely delivered from the awful, evil sins they once committed. I have often questioned the miraculous deliverances purported in these testimonies, especially when the speaker implies that my life must assuredly be changed in the same dramatic way if I truly repent of my sins and come to Christ. I do not intend to discuss a long, rambling account of my personal sins and the way I have tried to set them aside. I have found in my own experience that my besetting sins have persisted after I became a Christian, even though I am better than I once was. The difference in my life I want to discuss is not a dramatic reversal of my behavior. The Holy Spirit has helped me to get better over time, but I have not been made perfect, and I have not been radically and instantly delivered from sin. The change in my life that I want to focu...

Psychology, the way people think, has always been a fascination of mine. Great care must be used by a Christian in this area, but the concepts can often be redeemed. One of the most fascinating areas of psychology is temperament theory. Temperament theory can be traced back to Hippocrates. It is undeniably imperfect, and some have even rejected the theories altogether. Many of us are very reserved in temperament.  We were just made to be calm and quiet.   It might surprise those who know very little about people like us that we want to be happy. Not just happy-go-lucky, smile all the time, laugh at everything type happy, but truly happy. We want to be happy in the sense of being “blessed” or “delighted.” It might help to remind of the old adage, “Still waters run deep.” John Piper has been a great help to me in many ways. His teaching has reinforced much of what I have learned about the way my heart works. God made us to live a moral life, and we should ...

I have mentioned before that the ideas Christianity holds make intuitive sense to me. This idea is true of the central message of the Christian faith: what most call “the gospel,” or the good news. The gospel is intuitive in that, once I was made aware of it; I knew “in my gut” that it explained my experience. Of course, it is not intuitive in that I would never have thought this up without someone telling me about these truths. The gospel is the fact that God offers eternal life as a free gift. Paul wrote, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” As a gift, eternal life is not earned or deserved. I will return to this idea latter.  The law requires perfection. Jesus Himself said, “Be ye perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect.” We cannot avoid the knowledge that we have fallen short of this obviously true ideal.  (???) No one obeys the law perfectly or obeys the law with perfect motives: “For...

A bridge in Minneapolis collapses. Nuclear weapons experimentation makes Kazakhstan home to people with awful disfigurements. A train wreck in Brazil kills eight and injures over 100. Civil war tears apart the hopes and dreams of children in Africa. ISIS continues its reign of terror in the Middle-east.  Seemingly countless murders tear apart families. Evil, defined for this article as sin or injustice against another human being, is all around us. I am not about to try to give a comprehensive explanation for how evil came to be. I do not claim to be the kind of person who can do that.  God created men with the ability to sin and the ability not to sin, but I cannot reason beyond that. I do not know how evil came to be; I just know that evils exists. Evil is present. Evil is real. What must exist in order for evil and suffering to be truly wrong? Does not the existence of evil itself require a standard of good? Should we just accept evil as a part of the way...

I was very ill as a young child. I had a lung disease that left me breathless after walking a few feet, much more out of breath when trying to run, climb, or jump. I was thirteen before I began to grow out of it, but I had been through a lot before then. My illness always hit me hard when it came time for PE, physical education, class. That was when we divided up into teams to play sports. I was never the first one chosen for the team. I was usually chosen last. Everyone knew I would have little to contribute. My best contribution would be just to stay out of the way. Little League Baseball was and is more than a sport in Obion County, Tennessee, where I grew up. It is more like a religion. Parents had a lot to say about the make-up of the teams, and they organized try-outs. I tried hard, but I was never picked to be part of the best team. I always wanted to be part of the winning team. Christianity offered me the chance to be a part of the winning team, to be part...

There is no other religious leader like Jesus Christ. Many of us do not have a respect for authority in and of itself. In general, we do not care what a person’s position is, because we will respect them only if they are worthy of respect. Just because his title is “boss” or “professor” doesn’t mean that we will blindly follow his directives or uncritically do what he says.  We do not follow people who jump of cliffs. We do not care how many titles a person has, we will only listen to their teaching if we are convinced they are intelligent and trustworthy. That’s why Christ’s credentials as a teacher are so very important to us. What makes a good teacher? Some qualities of a good teacher include the fact that his teachings are true, and he can prove it. He follows his own teaching. He cares for those whom he teaches. And his teachings make a difference in the world. (Please note that I do not think a person must be male to be a good teacher. I use the masculine pronoun...

Logic Have you ever spent an afternoon thinking about thinking? Most people I know would quickly answer with a resounding “no.” Some would throw in an expletive. I admit that I am the type of person who thinks about thinking. One aspect of thinking is our ability to determine the internal consistency of ideas, or whether or not the ideas ‘fit together.’  We need to be able to know whether our thinking method itself is accurate. This reasoning is the realm of formal logic. Formal logic has always fascinated me. The laws of logic shape the way we think. They are an open window to the Christian God’s world. Let us examine one law for instance: the law of non-contradiction.  It says that something cannot be both A and Non-A at the same time, in the same relationship, and in the same sense. This law cannot be denied. To deny it is to affirm it. For example, if you say, “The law of non-contradiction does not apply,” you could mean, “The law of non-contradiction does...

This post is an argument for God’s existence based on what He did when He created the world.  Bear with me on this one, because this is the most intensely philosophical argument in this short series. God is eternal. He has no beginning and no end. This truth is foundational for a popular argument for God’s existence. Reason demonstrates that something in the past must have always existed.  We will look at two examples: counting and the progression of time. It is not possible to count to the end of the series of real numbers. You can always count one more. It is, in one sense, an infinite series of discrete things. You can’t move to the end of a series like that. It has no end. It is similarly impossible to move through an infinite series of moments of time, if time is in fact a discrete series of real moments. For example, if time extends forward forever then it is obvious it will never end. Reversing the process, if time extends infinitely into the past, time wou...

We can solve some problems intuitively. As an engineering major I was often faced with complex problems in mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other engineering disciplines that required much thought to solve. I was often guided by my intuition, a kind of problem-solving method best describe by the phrase: “AH-HA, now I see it.” Many of us were often able to see the answer without consciously thinking through the problem. Of course, we had to go back to the beginning, reason through our answer and provide a proper line of reasoning to get credit for the problem on an exam. The “AH-HA method” guided me through many problems and exercises. It guides me through many decisions I make today as a manager. Of course, I have to go back to data and facts derived from observation and careful thinking to make my case. I must still justify my actions to others. Does this mean the “AH-HA method” is inferior? Yes, it does in a least one way. Decisions should be made based on facts. ...