Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Sometimes people approach me and say, "I really struggle with this aspect of Christian teaching. I like this part of Christian belief, but I don't think I can accept that part." I usually respond: "If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hands is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead." This is ow the first hearers felt who head reports of the resurrection. They knew that if it was true it meant we can't live our lives any way we want. It also meant we don't have to be afraid of anything, not Roman swords, not cancer, nothing. If Jesus rose from the dead, it changes everything...
Most people think that, when it comes to Jesus's resurrection, the burden of proof is on believers to give evidence that it happened. This is not completely the case. The resurrection also puts a burden of proof on its nonbelievers. It is not enough to simply believe Jesus did not rise from the dead. You must then come up with a historically feasible alternate explanation for the birth of the church. You have to provide some other plausible account for how things began...
Tim Keller (The Reason for God)
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Evolutionists say that if God makes sense to us, it is not because he is really there, it's only because that belief helped us survive and so we are hardwired for it. However, if we can't trust our belief-forming faculties to tell us the truth about God, why should we trust them to tell us the truth about anything, including evolutionary science? If our cognitive faculties only tell us what we need to survive, not what is true, why trust them about anything at all?
It seems that evolutionary theorists have to do one of two things. They could backtrack and admit that we can trust what our minds tell us about things, including God. If we find arguments or clues to God's existence that seem compelling to us, well, maybe he's really there. Or else they could go forward and admit that we can't trust our minds about anything. What is not fair is to do what many evolutionary scientists are doing now. They are applying the scalpel of their skepticism to what our minds tell us about God but not to what our minds are tell us about evolutionary science itself.
Tim Keller (The Reason for God)
Friday, January 2, 2009
[Biblical miracles] lead not simply to cognitive belief, but to worship, to awe and wonder. Jesus' miracles in particular were never magic tricks, designed only to impress and coerce. You never see him say something like: "See that tree over there? Watch me make it burst into flames!" Instead, he used miraculous power to heal the seek, feed the hungry, and raise the dead. Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order.
Tim Keller (The Reason for God)
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.
CS Lewis (The Abolition of Man)
Friday, December 26, 2008
Think of people you consider fanatical. They're overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive, and harsh. Why? It's not because they are too Christian but because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, empathetic, forgiving, or understanding--as Christ was. Because they think of Christianity as a self-improvement program they emulate the Jesus of the whips in the temple, but not the Jesus who said, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone" (John 8:7). What strikes us as overly fanatical is actually a failure to be fully committed to Christ and his gospel.
Tim Keller (The Reason for God)
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Q. What do you get when a group of Christians sends their motorscooters to the mechanic's in the evening?
A. A Vespa Service!
Haa!
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Tuesday, January 6, 2009
