Shifting Family Values

Has the tomb of Jesus been found?

A very good and logical response to the recent news of the new documentary from James Cameron.

Some feedback on an AiG artical about evolution.


Excerpt:

I felt compelled to write and complain to you about your article "How to build a bomb in the public school system" which blames the teaching of evolution for the disaffected state of American schoolchildren.

An important distinction is made many times in our articles, which I am afraid you have failed to pick up. We try to make it clear that it is not inevitable that someone who believes in evolution will go out and commit violence. However, if an education system proposes that there are no moral absolutes, then, logically, the one who commits violence has some justification for their actions. If everybody has their own truth and their own standards, then why should anyone obey the Ten Commandments, including the injunction not to kill?...

Promiscuous Young Girls and the Media's Influence

Is Britney Spears the Prodigal Daughter?

I found an excellent article today titled Experiencing Emergent by Shane Rosenthal. Mr. Rosenthal attended an Emergent conference and the article details his experience.

Young People Leaving Hypocrisy, Not Traditional Church

The curse is not beauty...

On Sunday, February 11th many churches across the country celebrated what they call “Evolution Sunday”. On that day these churches attempted to show their congregations that Christianity and evolution are compatible.

In the article, What Hath Darwin Wrought, we see what the belief in Darwinian evolution means for society and how it is in direct opposition to the Christian faith.

Faith and Facts



Excerpt:

...Consider a guy who pushes a wheelbarrow across Niagara Falls on a tightrope every day. You've seen him do it so many times it doesn't even occur to you he won't make it. You believe with all your heart he can do it.

One day he comes up to you and asks, "Do you believe I can push this wheelbarrow across the tightrope without falling?" And you say, "Of course I do. I've seen you do it hundreds of times." "All right," he says, "get in the wheelbarrow."

Well, now we're talking about a whole different kind of thing, aren't we? The first is an intellectual belief, an acknowledgment of certain facts. The second is active faith, converting your knowledge to action. When you climb into the wheelbarrow, your belief in facts is converted into active trust.

Faith is knowledge in action. It is active trust in the truth. You go to the airport. You say, "This plane goes to New York. I believe it. I'll get on the plane. I'll invest myself in the things I believe to be true." That is biblical faith...

A new post from Dave Burchett talks about a new self help book that claims to know the secret of happiness.


Excerpt:

...Author Rhonda Byrne says the secret is the law of attraction. If you think positively you become a magnet that pulls everything you want toward you. Whether you want a new job, a million dollars, or a gorgeous girlfriend. I apparently need to reverse the polarity of my magnet because I tend to only pull dog hairs and dysfunctional people toward me. So I was intrigued. Especially when I discovered that The Secret carries this centuries’ version of the Good Housekeeping Seal…an endorsement from Oprah. Like she needs another million or a new job.

Byrne is an Australian reality-TV producer who discovered “the secret” to obtaining everything you want through studying religious and philosophical texts...

...People are so desperate to find something, anything, to give them hope and a little happiness. Like the old country song, I believe they are lookin’ for love in all the wrong places...

Students Reject Sex, Embrace Purity on Valentine's Day

I'M GONNA BE A DAD!

Right now he or she is about 10 weeks old. This picture was taken at 9 weeks. We are so thankful to God for this tiny miracle in our lives.

Multiple answers to prayer

So this morning I told God that I didn't know what or who to pray for. I've been kind of stuck like that for about a week. I've been praying but I just had no idea what people were in need of so the intercessory part of my prayer life just felt empty. So I asked God this morning to show me people that are in need of prayer. Well God showed up big time today. Over the course of the day He has shown me four different people in need of prayer.

One thing I know I need to get better at is asking people if they are in need of prayer and asking people to pray for me. I know that everyone is in need of prayer in some way or another we just need to ask each other to pray for each other. So if you are reading this now and are in need of prayer let me know (click the contact link up to the right to email me), talk to your pastor, a friend, or a parent.

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. James 5:16 (NIV)

A Tale of Two Cities: Resisting the Atheist Attack

Excerpt:

We have here a tale of two cities. One is the city envisioned by the Founders where God has created all men and women with a fundamental equality which ensures that every person's rights are secure. The strong do not have more worth than the weak, the young do not have more value than the old, and the rich do not have more human rights than the poor. The self-evident truth is that, despite the differences, every human being enjoys an essential dignity. Every life is precious, even the wretched, weak, penniless, despised, feeble and frightened.

Then there is the city envisioned by modern atheists like Peter Singer. This is a place where a dog can have more worth than a handicapped child. This is a place where a grandmother with Alzheimer's disease has no dignity if she has no one who loves her. This is a place where newborn babies can be killed if they are imperfect or unwanted. It is a godless city where human worth is measured on a sliding scale. Woe is she who is wretched, weak, penniless, despised, feeble and frightened. Such people may have been better off as a dog or a cat than an unwanted and imperfect human being!

Christianity's Real Record

Excerpt:

It’s easy to characterize religion as a blood-thirsty enterprise. History seems to be strewn with the wreckage of witch hunts, crusades, and religious jihad. If God does exist, a caller to my radio show offered, He ought to be tried for crimes against humanity.

The recent terrorist attacks have added a new twist: Our battle is not against terrorism per se, but against any religion that claims to be true. Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times called it "religious totalitarianism."

Friedman’s solution: pluralism, the idea that "God speaks multiple languages." No one faith is exclusively true. Instead, all faiths are legitimate paths to God and anyone who claims otherwise is the enemy. Friedman’s call to arms, however, is misguided for three reasons.

Friedman Fails

First, it’s self-defeating. The issue is not God’s linguistic ability, but whether anything particular is true about God and whether God has made any specific demands on us regarding conduct, worship, or salvation. Do the details matter to God?

Friedman says no; God is a pluralist. He fails to recognize that this is a narrow, exclusivist (excluding non-pluralists), religious claim that he thinks is true. Not only is he dogmatic about this doctrine of God, he’s also militant. Those who disagree should be silenced. Friedman counters what he mistakenly perceives to be "religious totalitarianism"(in fact, most exclusivist religions are not militant) with the genuine article. His view commits suicide.

Second, Friedman misdiagnoses the problem, which he thinks is religious dogma. Of necessity, though, everyone (including Friedman) is dogmatic about issues of truth. It can’t be otherwise. Any claim is either true or false. If true, then those that contradict are wrong by simple force of logic.

The problem is not religious dogmatics, but religious error. The problem with Muslim terrorists is not fundamentalism, but that their fundamental beliefs are simply false. Ironically, Friedman’s pluralism prevents him from asking the only question that really matters: What religion is true?

Finally, it’s just erroneous that religion has been responsible for more carnage than anything else in history. The challenge has two parts. An allegedly factual observation about history is then taken as an inherent criticism of religion in general and Christianity in particular.

This is misguided. First, the crimes themselves have been exaggerated. Second, the greatest evil in the world actually comes from those who deny God’s existence. Third, Christianity cannot be held responsible when people do un-Christian things. Finally, Christianity’s real record of goodness is without peer in world history...

Why it is so important to believe in Biblical inerrancy

In the 1971 paper, "A Defense of Abortion", Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote the following:

I propose, then, that we grant that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. How does the argument go from here? Something like this, I take it. Every person has a right to life. So the fetus has a right to life. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body; everyone would grant that. But surely a person's right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed.

It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.

See rebuttle of this arguement and its flaws in the article,Unstringing the Violinist, by Gregory Koukl.

Excerpt:

A recent book, Breaking the Abortion Deadlock: From Choice to Consent, uses the same approach. Author Eileen McDonagh points out that if a woman's liberty is being threatened in some fashion—if she is being attacked, raped, or kidnapped—then the law gives her the latitude to use lethal force to repel her attacker.

Pregnancy, McDonagh argues, is this kind of situation. "If a woman has the right to defend herself against a rapist, she also should be able to use deadly force to expel a fetus," she writes. In pregnancy, a woman is being attacked by another human being—from the inside, not from the outside. Therefore, she has the moral liberty to repel her attacker by killing the intruder....

...Are there important differences between pregnancy and kidnapping? Yes, many.

First, the violinist is artificially attached to the woman. A mother's unborn baby, however, is not surgically connected, nor was it ever "attached" to her. Instead, the baby is being produced by the mother's own body by the natural process of reproduction.

Both Thompson and McDonagh treat the child—the woman's own daughter or son--like an invading stranger intent on doing harm. They make the mother/child union into a host/predator relationship.

A child is not an invader, though, a parasite living off his mother. A mother's womb is the baby's natural environment. Eileen McDonagh wants us to believe that the child growing inside of a woman is trespassing. One trespasses when he's not in his rightful place, but a baby developing in the womb belongs there...

Nice guys finish....first

Don’t Let Legalism Kill Your Joy in Ministry

Judging Intelligent Design

Best Super Bowl Ever

Well at least in my humble opinion. I really think that God had a hand in who went to the Super Bowl this year. For me the most exciting part of the game was when Tony Dungy said, "But again, more than anything, Lovie Smith and I are not only African-American but also Christian coaches, showing you can do it the Lord's way. We're more proud of that.", during the trophy ceremony.

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