Faith & Reason

Faith and reason interplay.

"God has put enough into this world to make faith in Him a most reasonable thing, but has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason alone. There's an interplay - it is not faith in nothingness or subjectivity, it is the systematic reasoning that God gives to us, it says, 'You're the One whom I want to lean on for this.' So the dimensions are there, both. And the fact of the matter is, the scientist too lives an awful lot by faith."
--Ravi Zacharias

Mind and Heart Q&A (Part 1 0f 4)
An open forum with Dr. Ravi Zacharias and two top scientists - Louw Alberts and David Block. Continue reading →

Has Christianity Failed You?

"In the effort to become relevant, we have forgotten that some things are going to be irrelevant, and it is we who need to become relevant to the truth - not the other way around. Imagine the old, whole idea of a square peg in a round hole... trying to force it - what you do in the end is just damage the edges of the peg. And sometimes we force God into our mold, and then when He doesn't fit, we damage God. We say, 'This is what I expected of you, but it has not turned out.' What I think I have concluded is this: That the greatest of loves will often come at the greatest of cost. The greatest of loves will never come cheaply. It takes everything you've got to honor that love, and it takes everything you've got to honor that trust. And the greatest of love that you and I could have is that relationship with God."
--Ravi Zacharias

Has Christianity Failed You?:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3 (Coming Soon)
Part 4 (Coming Soon) Continue reading →

Spirituality

What you need to do is not be spiritual, but be spiritually right. You have a right to believe whatever you choose, but what you believe must be right.
--Ravi Zacharias

Click here to hear the entire answer to the question: Do we have to say it's only Christianity that will save the world or will Spirituality? Continue reading →

Postmodernism and Christianity

Is there any consistency between Postmodernism and Christianity?

Postmodernism brings us two things:

1. No truth, no meaning, no certainty.
   
2. The denegration of propositional truth. Language is not at the command of the author. The interpretation is at the command of the reader.

You take no truth, no meaning, no certainty and that the objective truth of the writer is gone, what's left of the Bible? What's left of Christianity? So, there is no common ground in their epistemology (The base from which they come to truth.) However, Postmodernism has done something positive for us...


Postmodernism reminds us of two very important things in life:

1. The Importance of the Story. There is a story that people love to hear. If we do preaching only at a cerebral level and just at a level of logic and reason, without the story, it will come unhinged and unmoored.


2. The Importance of Community. Here, the church has a lot to learn. The church sometimes has become ruggedly individualistic and forgotten the community. In fact, those who are hurting or those who have blown it or those who have made mistakes, we are the first one to pounce on them and pulverize them and pummel them to the ground when we should be the ones waiting for them to come so that we can help them in their need.

These points were taken from Ravi Zacharias. Click here to hear everything he had to say, concerning this particular question (Is there any consistency between Postmodernism and Christianity?)

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Faith

"What is faith?"

As Christians, we often tell people that we have "faith" and that our "faith" is in Jesus Christ. But just what is this faith that we speak of? What does it mean to have "faith"?

Hebrews 11:1-3 & 6(NIV)
1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for. 3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

For reasons only (fully and truly) known by God, we (mankind) have been called to have faith in God.

Why am I telling you this?

To simply acknowledge that it does indeed take faith to be a follower of Jesus Christ. In previous posts, I have talked about how unshakably true the Word of God is and how the Christian faith and the Bible have withstood the fiercest scrutiny. Yet, even when the facts stack up and all things point to the Bible being true... you come to that point where you have to have faith. You've never seen God, you've never heard God, so you don't know that He is real (a lot of times as humans, we don't believe it unless we see it), but His Word tells us that He is and He asks us to have faith.

"How can I REALLY, TRULY know that God is real? If He is real, why can't I see Him? Why can't I hear Him? Why......"

John 20:24-29 (NIV)
24 Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." 26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." 28 Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" 29 Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Continue reading →

Hang-ups

Take a moment, clear your mind, and answer this question as honestly as you can:

What is hindering you from believing in God? What is keeping you from accepting the person of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?

If you reject the Christian faith, if you reject the Bible, if you reject Jesus, let me ask you this:

Why? REALLY...... why?

Do you have a reason? If so, have you considered your reasoning? If you've been hung-up on something you don't understand about God, Jesus, the Bible or the Christian worldview, have you pursued answers to your question(s)? If you haven't, I'd encourage you to do so.

Here's one example of what I'm talking about:

Do you reject the Christian faith because "Christians are hypocrites."? If so, I'd suggest that you reconsider this reasoning. The Bible tells us that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) Have you rejected Christ because people who have talked to you about Him have judged you and said or acted like they were better than you? If you've thought, "They're no better than me!", you are correct... they aren't better than you. The Bible also says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:9) They have not attained salvation by their own doing, salvation is a free gift from God that you cannot earn. They don't "deserve" to spend eternity with God in heaven, anymore than anyone else.

Jesus dealt with this very thing in the gospels. The Pharisees were confident in their knowledge of the law, and how they had kept the law. Jesus said in Luke 11, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them." God is fully aware of hypocrisy and when Jesus came to earth, He definitely addressed the issue head-on.

So what? What's the point?

Say for instance you truly don't believe there is a God, but then... you die, and you find out there really IS a God. What do you have to say for yourself? Will you blame your disbelief on those pesky Christians who acted like they were better than you? (They shouldn't do that by the way, I'm not suggesting that they don't have a responsibility to act right.) What would God say in response to that if you did? I believe that He covered every possible angle. There are no loop-holes. If you read His Word, you will find that it's VERY clear:

Acts 4:12 (NIV)
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.

There are no excuses... He has provided a way for mankind to find redemption. There is ONE way to God the Father, and that is through His son, Jesus Christ. And His Word (The Holy Bible), which tells us about that way... is being spread all over the world so that all may know that the payment for our sin has been paid by the blood of Jesus Christ.

God isn't asking you to accept the "truth" and actions of man... He is asking you to accept His truth and His actions. He sent His son Jesus to die for your sins and mine. Christianity is ultimately about Christ. He was born of a virgin, He was crucified, He died, and He rose again. Through Him, we have victory over sin and death.

So, what's your hang-up? What are you struggling to accept? What's keeping you from following Christ? Continue reading →

Dangerous Times

I say to you - we are living in dangerous times, not because of attacks from outside of this land, but because this land no longer knows what it believes. Until we know what we believe here, and what it is that is worth preserving, we will never know what it is that's really being attacked.
-- Ravi Zacharias

What is destroying the moral and spiritual foundation of today’s society?

Ravi Zacharias: I believe a convergence of many factors has taken place. Much of education in the 1960s came unhinged from any moral absolutes and ethical values, to wit the book Excellence Without a Soul by Harry R. Lewis. We have seen this happening the last 40 years. There have been many voices alerting us to this. But more than just a philosophy took over; a mood took over.

First, secularization generally held that religious ideas, institutions, and interpretations have lost their social significance. People liked the idea of a secular society and a secular government. But in terms of moral values and ethics, they never checked into the internal assumptions of secularization that made it wide open to almost any view on any subject. Beginning in the 1960s, the moods of secularization ultimately led to society’s loss of shame.

Next is pluralization, which sounds like a practical and worthy idea; and in many ways, it is. In pluralism you have a competing number of worldviews that are available, and no worldview is dominant. But smuggled in with pluralization was the absolutization of relativism. The only thing we could be sure of was that all moral choices were relative and there was no point of reference to right and wrong. This resulted in the death of reason.

Last is privatization, which is an accommodation to the religiously minded. If secularization and pluralization were going to hold sway, what does society do with the large number of people who are spiritually minded?

Being spiritually minded was okay as long as people kept their spiritual beliefs private and did not bring them into the public arena. The irony of this was the fact secularization — which had its assumptions on absolutes and anything of the metaphysical nature — was allowed into the public place. In fact, its very trust was to bring it into the public place. But anyone who believed in a spiritual Essence, an Ultimate Reality, and the fact there were transcendent absolutes that needed to be adhered to was told to keep those beliefs private. That ultimately paved the way for the loss of meaning.

These three moods — secularization, pluralization, and privatization — brought about loss of shame, loss of reason, and loss of meaning. How was this authoritatively pontificated in the social strain? This is when philosophy stepped in, the moralizers against morality came in, and political correctness came in. These gave society some parameters that allowed it to expel the moralizing from outside the secular realm.

As a result, everything became pragmatic. Philosophers and naturalists stepped in. In this new century, we have lost all definitions of what it means to be human, and what sexuality, life, and the home are all about. We are on the high seas, battling the storms of conflicting worldviews without a compass. Continue reading →