HIS week news outlets have featured a recent discovery of the possibility of life on Venus. Don’t get too excited though, they haven’t found anything close to intelligent life. The temperature and toxic atmosphere make that highly improbable. But scientist have discovered a pocket of gas through a telescope that they feel might be best explained as caused by some sort of life.
ICHARD Dawkins once suggested a new clothing line of T-shirts with the slogan, “Atheists for Jesus.” Dawkins says Jesus only believed in God, because that’s what everyone believed back then. In his essay “Atheists for Jesus,” Dawkins sounds a lot like the second century heretic Marcion, who believed Jesus was nothing like the grumpy God of the Old Testament.
Y daughter loves otters. I even made her an otter book for her last birthday. That’s why I was excited to show her a chapter in an apologetics book I read this last week. It’s not that she is overly interested in apologetics, she’s seven-years-old. In his book Jesus Skeptic, author and apologist John Dickerson, uses otters to illustrate the positive influence of the Christian worldview.
NCE upon a time, an Italian guy found a treasure in a used book shop. And yes, I’m speaking of myself. In Nashville, TN, I found a copy of a first edition G.K. Chesterton book that had a newspaper clipping from “The Tennessean” from 1921 which described how the British author was speaking at the Orpheum Theater that week. Additionally, it had a torn ticket stub from the Orpheum, and G.K. Chesterton’s signature on the title page. All that for fifteen bucks!
HE Apostle Peter witnessed Jesus’s glory and heard the voice of God the Father. Mark’s gospel records that Peter was also joined by James and John. When they all became speechless due to fear, Peter decided to fill the awkward silence by saying something stupid (Mark 9:6). That was nothing new. But in Peter’s letters, Peter places the focus on Scripture, not on how powerful it was to see and hear everything they witnessed on the mountainside.
AST week I published a post about how often religious groups ground their beliefs in the Bible, but then extend the authority of Scripture beyond what seems reasonable. It’s easy to do. I’m sure I’ve been guilty before. You feel confident of your interpretation of a text but then give equal credence to your nuanced application. It’s easy to conflate the two.
HAT is more important, the Word of God or the tradition of man? For conservative Christians, this seems rather straight forward and easy. But our actions might show otherwise.
N his book The Artist’s Way of Preaching, Charles Denison says, “Most people do not read poetry, but the preacher should!” I wholeheartedly agree. But I will go a step further, I think preachers should listen to poetry too.
ATCHING “Thor: Ragnarok,” a Marvel movie about the superhero character inspired by Greek mythology (for the uninitiated), my son Isaiah’s response to a scene made me think about Christianity. Stan Lee makes a cameo in every Marvel movie as he is the creative brain behind the galactic enterprise. In this particular Thor film, Lee is a barber who cuts off Thor’s hair in a rather biblical kind of Samson meets Delilah moment.
