Fear and Trembling

“Our prayers should arise out of immersion in the Scripture. [We] speak only to the degree we are spoken to. . .The wedding of the Bible and prayer anchors your life down in the real God.” (Keller 2014, 55, 56) Many books have been written, and many electrons have been rearranged on the internet, about prayer.  And rightly so; prayer is the way we bend our wills to God’s will and influence the things only God can change.  One of the best ways for a Christian to pray is to use the words of the Bible to guide those prayers.  The first place to turn is the Psalms.  The Psalms are often called God’s prayer book.  Luther called them “a Little Bible” because “in it all things that are contained in the whole Bible are given to us in the most wonderfully brief and sweet manner and condensed into a most beautiful manual” (Luther n.d.) . The poems of the Psalms cover the full range of human emotions and allow those emotions to be expressed to God.  Every one of the major parts of prayer are voic

  Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.   I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.   I hope you find the short essays helpful.     There are many religions.  Why is Christianity right?  Why is it the one?             Christianity is based on historical claims where most religions are not.  Jesus died on a Roman cross in about 33 A. D. under Pontius Pilate.  These are historical facts that can be checked out to see if they are true.  That means that evidence can be used to justify belief in Christianity.  Some of these arguments and evidence are given above, but there are many places to get evidence for Christianity’s claims.  Here are some names to get you started.              Some places to look on the internet are: www.str.org and www.ligonier.org .  Some helpful books include The Reason for God by Timothy Keller, Reasons to Believe by R

  Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.   I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.   I hope you find the short essays helpful.     What do you say to someone who tells you that you don’t need to worry about her soul?  She doesn’t participate in church except through video and said that out of anger because I said that we don’t know when we are going to die.              It might be time to back off a bit, pray for them, and let them come to you next time.  At the very least, let them ask you questions first.  It is probable that you have shared the gospel with this person more than once.  Let any future conversations be natural and not forced.  Asking good questions can also help a person think.  Some questions might include: What do you do with your stress?  How do you handle life? What ‘gets you through the day?’ Why do you work as har

  Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.   I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.   I hope you find the short essays helpful.     Why do Presbyterians believe in “predestination?”  All Bible-believing Christians believe in predestination because the word “predestination” is in the Bible.  You must teach about any word that’s in the Bible if you truly claim to believe the Bible.  Presbyterians teach something specific about predestination though, so let’s look at that. It all comes back to what the Bible says.  The Bible says that: “No one is righteous—not even one.  No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God.  All have turned away; all have become useless.  No one does good, not a single one.  Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave.  Their tongues are filled with lies.  Snake venom drips from their lips.  “Their mouths ar

  Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.   I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.   I hope you find the short essays helpful.   Why would I want to be part of a system that has done so much harm?  Regarding people who have left the church/faith due to injury by broken churches.             Always find out what a person means by their objection.  Ask, “Why do you believe that?”  Ask questions until you understand the real reason.  Listen well.  One answer to personal issues is sympathy, empathy, and shared tears.  This objection is very much like the problem of evil discussed at length above, so the answers given here will be short and to the point.  You don’t usually quit eating out because of a bad meal at one particular restaurant.  So, why should you quit the Christian faith over one church that violates the teachings of Jesus?  There are

              Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.   I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.   I hope you find the short essays helpful.   What do I say when a person says they believe in many gods?             Why do you believe in many gods/religions when those religions contradict each other?  See the essay above for where to go from there.  The point is that logic applies to all of reality.  It must.             To say that all religions are equally true is to say something can be true and not true at the same time and in the same relationship.  That cannot be right.  Some religions agree on some things, but the contradictions are many.            A s an aside, to say that nothing can be known about religion is to say something can be known about religion; namely, that nothing can be known about religion.   It’s kind of like saying “I

  Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.   I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.   I hope you find the short essays helpful.   That’s your truth, not mine.           There is only one truth.   Truth is the way things are in the real world.   Things can be both true and false at the same time and in the same way.   Religious things are no exception.   Sometimes, this means that the problem is one of bias, so I will answer that as well.  People are Christians for a variety of reasons, humanly speaking.  Many of us were raised in a Christian home, by Christian parents. Many of us have attended church our entire lives. Does this mean we are biased? Yes, but it does not logically follow that we are wrong.  The strength or weakness of an argument should be evaluated independent of the circumstances of the person or persons giving the argument. 

  Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.   I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.   I hope you find the short essays helpful.   Do you truly love LGBTQIA+ if you bar them from being their true selves?  Are you supposed to accept people for who they are?                “Their true selves” are valuable and lovable because they are made in God’s image.   They are not defined as a person by their behavior.   They are separate from that.   It is clear from the Bible that God considers homosexuality a sin (Leviticus 18, Romans 1).  Are people defined by their sin or by their being made in the image of God?  People are valuable and worthy of respect because they are made in God’s image (Genesis 1).  I can accept a person who is made in God’s image and still reject their sin just as I can love a person who does things which I disapprove of.  We don’t

Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.  I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.  I hope you find the short essays helpful.    What happens to children who die before the age of accountability?  Do they go to hell just for the sins of dead people?             That’s really a good question.  I do not have a definitive answer for it.             I do know that David expected to see his son again in heaven when his son died as an infant (2 Samuel 12:22-23).  That leads many to believe that infants go to heaven when they die before they can understand religion.                    I also know, if they do go to hell, it is not for “the sins of dead people.”  They would go to hell for their own sinfulness.  They would go because of the kind of people they are, born in sin.  That’s what original sin means: we are all born the kind of people who sin

  Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.   I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.   I hope you find the short essays helpful.     Is God merciful if he sends someone to hell who has never heard about Jesus Christ?             The Bible says that God’s existence is ‘as plain as the nose on your face,’ that is God’s existence is easy to see from nature.  When we look at the evidence of nature, we clearly see that God exists.  It’s just that some of us choose to ignore the evidence.  If all humans see the evidence, and some ignore it, then why wouldn’t those who ignore it be responsible for their willful ignorance?  Why is it less awful to reject God as He reveals Himself in nature than it is to reject Jesus as He is presented to us in the gospel?              As R. C. Sproul puts it, those who never hear about Jesus Christ see God’s “eternal

Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.  I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.  I hope you find the short essays helpful.    If God is all-good and all-powerful, why is there evil? Why would God allow ________ if he is real?             These questions get at what many people have called the “problem of evil.”  The problem of evil is supposed to be the main philosophical objection to Christianity, but it’s not a philosophical problem at all.  But there are two types of the problem of evil, and each has a different approach and answer.  These are the philosophical problem of evil and the personal problem of evil, and you must ask questions to determine which one the person is dealing with.  We will look at them each in turn.  If you ask a person, “What do you mean by that?”, and their answer involves David Hume or Immanuel Kant or Richard