|
Last Monday I was interviewed by Jim Wallace for the Please Convince Me podcast. If you are not familiar with his ministry, I give it my highest recommendation. Jim does an amazing job of taking philosophical, scientific, and historical evidence and presenting it in a logical and compelling way. He's a former atheist and really understands how many non-Christians really think. We had a great chat about my recent debate with James Corbett and other apologetics issues. Check it out! |
I receive a new book to review almost every day; usually three or four. I am glad I am loved, but it can be overwhelming. There is no way I have space to include reviews of all these titles in Bible Study Magazine, so I have to choose which ones will make the cut. I also have to choose which ones get to stay in my office at the end of the year. And then I have to apologize to the rest of the books that get moved to a lonely shelf somewhere else. (Sorry my friends. Just because you are exiled doesn’t mean I don’t love you.) This year, spring came early in “the city of subdued excitement,” Bellingham, Washington. This meant it was time for some old friends (my books) to get the boot. Time to let Recyclops, Dwight Schrute, move them to the lonely, nomad shelf. (I really moved them with the help of my buddy Phil Gons, who is a Marketing Manager at Logos Bible Software where we both work.)
continue reading
|
|
Check out this interview I did last week with Apologetics 315, one of the more popular apologetics Podcasts. We talked about effective apologetics today, youth and apologetics, as well as some of the more pressing questions people are asking about the faith. |
Thanks to our friends at Holman Bible Publishers, we are giving away some copies of the Apologetics Study Bible for Students, designed to ground Christian students in the truths of Scripture by equipping them with thoughtful and practical responses to difficult and heartfelt challenges to core issues of faith and life. To be eligible to win a copy of the paperback edition (1400+ pages in length), here's all you do:
continue reading
|
|
Here is Part 1 of the debate between Sean McDowell and James Corbett on the question, "Is God the Best Explanation for Moral Values?" To view Part 2, click on "continue reading."
continue reading
|
Geoffrey Chaucer, the guy who might have had Shakespeare’s reputation if Will hadn’t done his thing so brilliantly, wrote this little book you might have heard about. His magnum opus is, of course, The Canterbury Tales, and its prologue reads like 13th century reality television, a sort of Real World for Medieval England. Chaucer examines his own society in all its wacky diversity and throws twenty-seven characters together on a journey, many of them religious. They are, supposedly, going to pay homage to a slain archbishop, but it's just a set up. We're more interested in the bufoonery on display than the pilgrimage itself. As I see it, Chaucer’s pilgrims are the perfect mirror of his society. They are alternately perverse, holy, hypocritical, promiscuous, chaste, and hilarious. The Roman Catholic Church is the target of much of his fun, but he also takes a shot at gender roles, infidelity, body building, stupidity, and farting, among other targets. It’s a hoot, let me tell you. In re-reading Chaucer, I am impressed by his wit. It can’t be missed. Had Chaucer’s Christian characters all been scoundrels, I would’ve dismissed him as a nasty critic, only eager to expose the religious misfits and hypocrites. But Chaucer’s genius is even better displayed in his evenhanded treatment of the world he observes. Consider this description of the humble Parson, a country pastor whose love of his congregation showcases the transformation of Christ in a perverse world:
He was a shepherd and not mercenary.
|
In the Greek pantheon of emotions, Love has the power of Zeus, Compassion is the lovely Aphrodite, and Anger kicks butt like Ares—but Sadness? He’s just a hated Cyclops, weeping out of that one ugly eye, a monster that nobody likes at all. Sadness is the emotion that Americans like to eliminate right away. If our children are sad, we try to fix them with candy and distractions. If our best friend has the blues, we invite him to Happy Hour. A spouse feeling down? Well, here’s some shopping money, a round of golf, maybe a massage. We are uncomfortable with sadness; it’s such a downer to everyone in its radius. Poets seem to understand the beauty of sadness better than the rest of us, but some are really just happy pretending they are sad. Bands like Atreyu (who sing lines like It only hurts when I breathe) capitalize on youthful angst with an almost self-conscious joy, and when the Smiths sing My gut is burning. Won't you find me some water? / Hey,just forget it . . . Can you bring me gasoline? their hyper-tragic lines betray a twisted kind of happiness Yet John Donne, a profound 16th century metaphysical poet whom I reckon never wore an emo haircut or painted his fingernails black, wrote “Affliction is a treasure and scarce any man hath enough of it.” I believe he was closer to getting at the real paradox of sadness: that when we try to kill suffering too quickly, we short circuit the natural order of things. And what is the natural order of things? It’s first moving in rhythm to Ecclesiastes chapter 3, where there is a time for everything under the sun. It’s experiencing both suffering and joy, the juxtaposition of which ultimately defines both. It’s found in the book of James which makes the audacious claim, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”
continue reading
|
How do you ignite a firestorm of conversation about God? These days the best spark is a controversial statement, such as the one delivered by news pundit Britt Hume about Tiger Woods. Of course, it helps that Hume is fairly well-known as a former national news anchor who is in "retirement" but still does occasional news analysis for Fox News. If you or I had made a plea for Tiger to embrace Christianity as Hume did on Fox News Sunday this week, few would have noticed or cared. But Hume made his remarks on a national stage about an already famous person whose bizarre encounter with a tree and a golf club--and whose subsequent submersion into a strange kind of Howard Hughesian privacy--has everyone talking.
continue reading
|
|
Check out this video my dad and I recently produced with ConversantLIfe. I love doing TV and radio interviews, but there's something particularly special about partnering with my dad. In this Livestream interview, we discuss apologetics and ministry today as well as take questions from a live online audience. There's some great content here. Don't miss it, and pass it on!
continue reading
|
|
|
|
|
