Dealing with our relational blind spots

One the biggest blind spots we humans seem to have is the ability to “do unto others as we would want done to us.” That’s what makes Jesus’ admonition so interesting. What we’ve called the golden rule, one of the most highly regarded relational principles, we continuously fail to do. In fact, we rarely consider it…unless, of course, someone else is not doing it for us. 

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A critique of Scientism

The growth of science since the 20th century has led to the emergence of a new belief concerning how humans can properly obtain knowledge. This new belief, called scientism, is the claim that science is our only source of real knowledge about the world. I’ve written quite a bit about this before (see here), but I thought the following short video was a good overview of scientism from another source. 

Two kinds of doubts

It’s been said that doubt is just having more faith in something else. And, as Tim Keller says in the video interview below, when looking at doubts about God there are honest doubts and there are dishonest doubts. The trouble is, we’re not always sure ourselves about which doubts we’re expressing. It’s very difficult to assess our own heart. 

The reformational nature of the Church

Throughout church history, there’s been a reformational element within orthodoxy that seeks to return to the New Testament expression of the church: toward the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, and away from institutional religion.

This is because the body of Christ, the “church,” is not an institution, it’s a living organism. 

Do you love me more than these?

Jesus asks Peter, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?” (John 21:15). The “more than these” is a sticky question we must all answer if we want to follow Christ. It took Peter, the one who bragged that he would not be like the others and deny Christ, denying Him three times in one night before he would realize that he loved self-preservation more than he loved Jesus. 

More real that the ground I’m standing on

I’ve talked a lot about God and science and faith, so I thought I would briefly talk about what faith means to me. One line in a song says it all for me, “You’re more real than the ground I’m standing on.” This comes from a song by Jonathan David Helser titled, “Abba.” I’ve included a recent rendition of this song below. 

Kierkegaard: Reintroducing Christianity into Western Culture

Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher in the early to mid-19th century. What’s interesting to me is that he predicted the cultural Christian problem we have even to this day and talked about how to reintroduce genuine Christianity back into the culture.

I’ve included a short video clip about Kierkegaard’s thoughts on this that I believe would be a good follow-up to my last post. Kierkegaard was basically saying the same thing over 150 years ago (only more brilliantly) that I was trying to say in my post, where I was contrasting Christendom with following Christ.