Government and the Gospel

      Recently, as Supreme Court Justices, Presidents and other local Government officials have thrown the Constitution out the window, embraced tyranny and paraded the homosexual agenda; it’s become clear that America is currently under judgment and what we’re experiencing is the painful fruits of God’s judgment on a nation. But the question is; what now? Do we sit back and watch the fireworks? Do we quit our jobs like the Thessalonians and await the supposed rapture?

Many should rightly answer, “We continue to preach the Gospel!”

After all, Governments are in charge of us and Romans 13 clearly states we can do nothing but submit to its authority, at all times…

Or does it?

Quick review of The Gods of the Copybook Headings

     As I was in the middle of writing my second post of this series, it was suggested to me that I write a short explanation of the poem of the Gods of the copybook headings. In this short post I hope to give some background and clarification that will help the reader understand somewhat of what the author is trying to convey.

     The author of this poem is Rudyard Kipling, who lived from 1865 to 1936. During his lifetime, he wrote several stories and poems, including Just So Stories and The Jungle Book. The Gods of the Copybook Headings was published for the first time in 1919.

Now what is a copybook heading? Students used to use copybooks to practice their handwriting. At the top of the paper, there would be a perfect example of how to print something. The student would copy the handwriting on the rest of the page. Typically there would be a proverb (either from the Bible or other Literature).

CHANGES: part 1

      Change, something inevitable. Sometimes change is for the better, and sometimes it is not. From the moment we are born till the moment we die we are surrounded by change. With these next couple of posts I will be dealing with change in regards to our culture; looking at the change through the lens of a Christian perspective. Due to the length of the post I decided to separate them into a couple of posts. Before I begin on my own thoughts, I saw it fit to leave you with this poem. Please read and ponder as it is a fitting introduction to my next posts.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

Upside-Down Youth Ministry: A growing Problem

MTD: Upside-Down Youth Ministry

In the proceeding series on MTD, Rooted hopes to explore the implications of the religious atmosphere amongst our teens and ask the question, “What does the gospel have to say about this?”

When I was in college, I visited several churches from one particular denomination (which dominated the area) and found the same message in 90% of them. Until I found the exception, I kept looking for a different church. The sermon in most of them was essentially “be a good person and you will go to heaven”. I refused to go to a church preaching mere moralism. The truth is that I cannot succeed at being a good enough person to get into heaven and deep down I knew this. Moralism leads to attending Sunday services because it’s part of being a good person rather than out of a desire to worship the One who saved them.

Post Abortion

Pro-lifers slammed the international Journal of Medical Ethics for publishing late last month an article favoring “after-birth abortion”—previously known as infanticide—when children or adults are a burden to their families or when government pays for their care.

The core of the argument isn’t new at universities like Princeton, where ethicist Peter Singer has long approved killing 1-year-olds with physical or mental disabilities (see “Blue-state philosopher,” Nov. 27, 2004). But authors Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva push the argument further by defending the killing of any humans incapable of “attributing any value to their own existence.?…?Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life.”

The authors used the term “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to emphasize that countries with legal abortion operate illogically when they forbid the killing of born creatures insufficiently self-conscious to fear death. Hurt is subjective, not objective: “For a harm to occur, it is necessary that someone is in the condition of experiencing that harm.”

Continue Reading on www.worldmag.com

The Atheist’s Burden of Proof

 

The Atheist’s Burden of Proof

by BK on July 27, 2011

I was in a discussion today with an atheist, and the subject turned to the idea of burden of proof. It is a common claim that Christians own a burden of proof to prove that God exists, but that atheists do not own any burden at all. Here’s my response, that outlines the reason I disagree with this:

Many (and probably most) atheists will say they have nothing to prove at all, because atheism (a-theism) is merely being without a belief in the existence of any gods. Therefore, the only *positive* explicit assertion they are making is about their belief, and not about the actual existence of any god. That is, they aren’t necessarily saying “God does not exist” (although some do), but rather “I don’t believe there are any gods because I have not seen sufficient evidence to lead me to believe any exist.”
This position of not having a burden of proof is fine until one considers that holding any position whatsoever – even one of skepticism – implies a lot of things about reality, knowledge, possibly ethics, etc. That is, everyone (including the atheist) has certain assumptions (let’s call them “basic beliefs”) that they are leaning on in order to make any sort of claim, including the claim “I don’t believe in God.” Stated differently – nobody is neutral. We all have a network of basic beliefs we rely upon.
So, the challenge for the atheist comes when they are presented with the question “Do you believe *the God of the Bible* exists?” Notice the question isn’t simply “do you believe in any gods?” Instead, the question is about a specific type of God – the Christian God of the Bible.
Now, if the God of the Bible was like any other god, they could get away with saying “no” and leave it at that – no burden of proof. However, the God of the Bible isn’t like any other God. He claims that everyone knows he exists. He claims that he created the world. He claims that his existence is necessary for knowledge, ethics, aesthetics, etc. In short, he makes a bold claim about everyone’s ability to reason, weigh evidence, draw conclusions, etc. He claims that none of those actions that we all do on a daily basis would be possible unless he existed as described in the Bible.
So that opens up an interesting challenge to the atheist. They aren’t explicitly denying the existence of God when they say “I don’t believe he exists”, but they most definitely are *implicitly* denying his existence. Why is this? Well, it is because they are doing all these things that the God of the Bible claims ownership to, while at the same time they are saying “I don’t believe he exists.” They are relying upon all these basic beliefs that the God of the Bible claims *only* make sense if he exists.
To say they don’t believe he exists is to say that it is *possible* to do these things (reason, weigh evidence, etc.) without him existing. But God says it is not possible to do them without him existing. Therefore (by implication) they are saying “This kind of God *does not* exist”.
It isn’t an explicitly positive claim that God does not exist, but is rather an implicitly positive claim. Either way, it is a positive claim, and therefore they own a burden of proof.

God desires all men to be saved...all men or all men?

     When it comes to reading the Word of God it is quite easy to read a verse and forget that there is a surrounding context. What I mean is this; we are prone to looking at verses in the bible in isolation, and because of this, we can easily misinterpret what the word of God is actually saying. For example: in the book of Revelation chapter 3 we see Christ speaking to the Church of Laodicea. In verse 20 we read “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” This verse is used by many Christians when they are evangelizing to unbelievers. It goes something like this “if you open up the door to your heart and let Jesus in, He will surely come in and you will be saved”.  There is a problem when saying something like this (or something similar) or using this verse to witness to an unbeliever and it is mainly this: In this chapter and specifically this verse, Christ is speaking to the Church, not un-professing unbelievers. I hope this example shows why understanding the context is important. Having the understanding of context will help us in our further study of particular verses, and our main text of focus will be in 1 Timothy 2:4 “who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”  Before we begin let’s look at this verse with a surrounding context.