I remember exactly where I was on September 11^th 2001. I was leaving my biblical Hebrew class in seminary when another student approached the prof and told him what had taken place. As news of the events unfolded I remember this sinking feeling in my stomach. I felt sick. When I heard the news that the Supreme Court ruled to make gay-marriage legal, I had that same feeling. On September 11^th the twin towers fell. Today, two great towers of American culture have fallen.

Where America once had great respect for moral truth, today that tower is lying in a heap of rubble. And where America once had respect for the things of God, and even had a semblance of the “Fear of the Lord” that tower also is lying in a heap of rubble. Admittedly, one has to go back at least an entire generation to find those towers standing strong. But, for the majority of American history those two towers had a profound effect on the fiber of the American Republic. America is America only with those towers standing strong.

The founders of our republic understood the necessity of religion for a functional democracy. They believed that America would only be as strong as the people had a healthy love for the virtues and principles of religious truth. Sure, they were not all evangelical Christians, as we understood the term today. But, Continue reading →

By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible (Hebrews 11:3).

During the course of life most people develop some basic discerning tools in their intellectual arsenal that help them make sense of life. When people display these tools we normally say they have “common sense.” There are some things in life that just make sense when seen in a certain way. For instance, if you are walking in the woods and find a paper-clip lying on the ground, common sense will lead you to draw the conclusion that someone dropped it there by accident. No one would draw the conclusion that the paper clip just developed on its own in the woods. That scenario just does not make any sense. Common sense develops as a result of taking the time to observe the world around you. Simple observation leads one to understand that things like paper clips do not grow in the woods.

Having begun college a little latter than my peers, I spent time in the world developing my common sense before being introduced to idea’s that attempted to turn common sense upside down. I discovered that the longer I spent in the lecture hall the more I was encouraged to believe in idea’s as silly as believing that paper clips grow in nature. The longer I spent in school the more I began to see why our culture is in a crisis. As students we were constantly being bombarded with concepts that are absurd. Let me give you a couple jewels from just one book that was hailed as great thinking from the college I attended:

… social and political analysis which shows how such belief-systems have functioned to oppress and dehumanize will be very threatening, say, to philosophers intent on justifying the truth-claims that a good God can permit evil and suffering. But if, on the other hand, the aim of philosophy of religion is to enable becoming divine, becoming our sacred sexuate selves in relation to the earth and to one another, then mathematics and rigorous applications of theories of scientific epistemology are less likely to be helpful than are psychoanalytic theory, imaginative possibilities of human becoming drawn from literature and the arts, and careful and social political analysis.

’…naturally we ended up in Christianity by inventing a God such that it is he who comes’. But God isn’t the only one who comes. ‘It is the same for Saint Theresa – you only have to go and look at Bernini’s statue in Rome to understand immediately that she’s coming, there is no doubt about it. For that matter, the ‘mystical ejaculations’ are not restricted to the classics of the Christian tradition….

Slavery, conquest, and colonialization all appealed to God, the Great White Father.

That’s one book – and only a very small sampling from that very large book that I had to pay for. Let me say that again, I was required to buy this book. Your average college student must Continue reading →

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world— he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” (Isaiah 5:20-21; Revelation 12:9)

There have been few times in history when a mass psychosis seems to have taken hold of an entire civilization. We are living in such a time. It would be interesting to go back a few generations and bring a person back into our own time and observe their reaction to where we are as a culture. I think disbelief and shock would characterize their response to our current state of affairs.

In the not too distant past right living was taught and expected. Universal truths in regard to morals and ethics were universally accepted and lived by. When those standards were broken swift consequences followed. When a man and women married they were expected to work through their problems. If an individual committed a crime they were expected to face judgment. Kids were taught to respect their elders. People were taught personal responsibility and held accountable by their peers. Lying was always wrong. Hard work was expected. The family mattered; motherhood cherished; babies were a blessing; fathers were expected to take care of their families. God was honored; His laws obeyed; and the church respected. Teachers taught kids reading, writing, and arithmetic. The police were seen as the good guys; criminals were not held up as role models; and Hollywood understood that modesty was a necessity for a moral society.

There were standards that were held on the geopolitical front as well. When the evils of Hitler’s National Socialism captivated the German people and created a mass psychosis there, the rest of the Western world acted to stop the madness. When it became clear that communist Russia was ambitious for world domination, the West, again, curtailed their advances. Today the world is no longer capable of acting against evil with decisive action. The peoples of the West have been paralyzed by political correctness and the politicization of life.

Political correctness has generated doubt in the hearts of people about right and wrong, truth and falsehood, and has even led people to obsess about their own motivations. The politicization of life has emasculated people Continue reading →

Some thoughts on tonight’s debate: Bill Nye is a very good speaker. He is very personable and inviting. He has a good sense of humor. He is very likeable. I also think that his debating skills are very good. But … he presented only one real argument. His main argument, indeed, his only argument was based on a grand presentation of doubt. He did not prove evolution. He did not debunk creationism, or a young earth. He did not prove the superiority of naturalism. He simply raised the specter of a single question: is it reasonable? He failed to prove that creationism was unreasonable. He failed to debunk any argument that Ken Ham presented. He simply exalted man’s ability to be skeptical and doubt what he does not want to accept.

At the core of Bill’s argument was the philosophical position that man’s doubt and skepticism are the ultimate authority. Notice, that while he promoted science, he only presented skepticism. Even the so called scientific arguments he presented were actually props to raise doubts about creation. For example, he presented ice cores, and said that in order for those cores to be created in four-thousand years, that there would most likely have to be around 170+ summer/winter cycles per year. However, he did not present scientific evidence that those cores are old, and that they were developed in the manner he suggested. He did not present a scientific argument based on evidence that they are as old as he said they were. He simply used an assumption that they are old (he mockingly spoke about injecting bubbles into the ice) to raise doubts that the world is young. He succeeded in that endeavor, but failed to present any real scientific argument that would have led one to a reasonable conclusion that creationism is wrong – based on evidence.

Ultimately, Bill Nye the “Science guy” is a product of his culture. Instead of promoting science, he promoted man’s ability to declare himself the sole authority on matters of truth and falsehood. Notice, he had no problem appealing to “mystery” when it was convenient to do so. But when Ken Ham appealed to God, Bill mockingly said Ken was relying on “magic.” His appeal to “mystery” however, was intended to promote the unlimited imagination and wisdom of man; and was instead to be a grand appeal to man’s ability to define the boundaries life for himself. According to Bill, an appeal to God is small and unworthy of man’s intellect. But, an appeal to mystery, and man’s ability to imagine the possibilities, is the real god that should be enshrined.

If Bill Nye proved anything, he proved that man’s quest for self-deification has only intensified since the fall (we are the universe becoming itself). I did not walk away from Bill’s arguments having gained one shred of information that was meaningful. I walked away from him with the feeling that man’s only legitimate quest is to enshrine human imagination as the ultimate source of wisdom and knowledge.

In the end, he proved Ken Ham right.

There are some things more dangerous than a loaded gun in the hands of a criminal without a conscience. Ideas. specifically bad ideas in the minds of a people who have lost their conscience. In our culture today we are swimming in an ocean of bad ideas. The problem is that we are so used to the intellectual pollution that we have forgotten what good, wholesome, healthy, God-honoring ideas are. As a result our collective conscience had died.

Bad thinking does not lead to dead ends. It leads to dead people – physically, morally and spiritually. Take abortion for instance. When a woman aborts her child, the child is not the only casualty; usually the mother is as well. The baby dies a physical death, and the mother, having already died a moral death, begins to experience spiritual death as well.

Why did mommy have an abortion? Because somewhere, someone told her that it was a good idea. Before that, some politician convinced a rogue court that it was an idea implicitly embedded into the constitution. Before that some activist convinced women that it was an idea that would promote a woman’s health. Before that, it was practiced by Continue reading →

“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17).

Someone has rightly said that when a nation forgets God they are building their own gallows! A quick reading of the book of revelation confirms that observation. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that our society today is attempting to remove God from all areas of influence and authority. We are on a fast track to “forget” God. But, we need to remember that there is a high cost in doing so.

Historically it seems to be the case that the country who forgets God tends towards tyranny. Just two examples come to mind. The French revolution was really a wholesale rejection of God. It wasn’t just a rejection of the aristocracy. In the minds of the revolutionaries, the aristocracy represented an authority from God, and that could not be tolerated. So, they attempted to scrub God from every sphere of society. Instead of liberating themselves, however, they only consumed themselves at the guillotine.  Another example is seen in communist Russia. The state attempted to replace God, and the people suffered under one of the most brutal totalitarian forces the world has ever seen.

I believe there is a very real relationship between removing God from society and that society experiencing a form of slavery, as they find themselves under the boot of tyranny. But, we need to remember, it is not governments that forget God, it is the people who forget God. Governments are usually an expression of the people of the time. The French revolution was the result of the Jacobins, and communist Russia was the result of the Bolsheviks implementing Marxist ideology – both of which were atheistic in nature.

It has rightly been said that those Continue reading →