Girard and the trajectory of Scriptural revelation

Something I’ve said for a long time now is that you cannot properly understand the Bible without Jesus interpreting it for you. Yet, many Christians read the Bible indiscriminately, as if Jesus never happened. Historically, and even to this day, quoting the Old Testament to justify just about every questionable thing. 

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Christianity: The Founding Murder in Reverse

I talked about what René Girard calls the “scapegoat mechanism” that’s alive and well in human beings last time. This insidious desire is at the bottom of what poisons everything. This time I would like to look at what he said about Christianity and how the Cross of Christ exposes scapegoating and reverses the founding murder. 

How human beings poison everything

My tongue is firmly in cheek here, playing off the subtitle of Christopher Hitchens’s book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, but I do want to make a point about this that I believe I can back up with empirical data.

Here’s my logic: There has been much evil done in human history. All of these atrocities involve human beings. Therefore, human beings poison everything.

You will no doubt object to this simplistic

Why materialism won’t give us artificial consciousness

Okay, I’m clearly no expert in this field but my geek-oriented mind can read. Also, I believe the topic of consciousness can lend further understanding into our spiritual interactions with God, so it should be of some interest to us as Christians. And while materialists attempt to demonstrate that consciousness comes from physical matter, we have good reason to be skeptical. 

Shift Happens – SOZO Talk Radio interview

This is a video interview I did with my blogging friend Daniel Lovett for his Sozo Talk Radio program. We did this on Skype so the video is a bit choppy but the audio is good. Daniel and I talked about my book, Sonshift: Everything Changes in the Father’s Embrace, and shared other fun God stories. This is part one of a two-part interview.

You should also check out Daniel’s post, “Shift Happens, Mel Wild (pt 1)” and his blog. He has a lot of other good things to say there, too.

Dogmatism and the human delete key

I’ve noticed (or confirmed) something very interesting in my recent dialogue with atheists and skeptics about classical theology and philosophy. Like the dogmatic religious Fundamentalist, the atheist or skeptics also have their dogmatism and Fundamentalism. But what this actually reveals is the human “delete” key (or perhaps, trapdoor) in our mind that doesn’t recognize things we don’t expect. 

The Classical Argument for Christ

I’ve posted a whole series on the classical argument for the existence of God. Of course, as a Christian, I often get asked, “So, even if this Prime Mover exists, why should I believe in the Christian “God? Why not other religions?” 

This is a fair question and one that cannot be answered with the same deductive reasoning as with the metaphysical argument for God, but there is a logical connection we can make for the incarnation of God in the person of Christ, and why an invisible, transcendent, and infinite God would communicate with humankind this way.