• About
  • Blog Posts
  • Front Page
  • Greatest Hits

Apologetics4all – Dr. Williams' Religion Blog

~ Respectfully giving reasons for faith – 1 Peter 3:15

Apologetics4all – Dr. Williams' Religion Blog

Category Archives: Church

Skrewtape’s stamp of approval

28 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by D. L. Williams in C.S. Lewis, Church, Liturgy, Worship

≈ 2 Comments

Imagine my horror, when I saw this on the dark web. It appears my post on worship has gone viral there after receiving the infamous Screwtape‘s personal stamp of approval.

At great personal risk, I have copied the text of Screwtape’s response to my post. I hope it will be beneficial to you. I know I learned a lot from reading it.

An image of my post on worship with Screwtape's stamp of approval

An image of my post on worship with Screwtape’s stamp of approval

To: My pathetic colleagues including the deficient Wormwood

From: the Inimitable Screwtape, Master of Daemons and Online Trolls

Another obscure post from another unknown blogger was brought to my attention. But it worries me slightly. Let’s use it as an example of how to avoid the good and focus on the bad. There is some risk associated with Mr. Darren’s self-righteous post, but I think we can manage it if we divert the discussions in the Parking Lot and bring in some resources from the Department of Discord.

Mister Darren starts off with some noxious clap trap about love, love, and more love. Do your best to divert anyone who happens along his blog post to skim over this part. Try to tease them into thinking this lovey talk is just the normal background noise of “churchiness” and not that he REALLY loves his church, his pastors (bleh I can hardly stand to type that word), or his youth. The word “love” stinks of the enemy, and real love is intolerable.

On to the juicy parts. I would have ignored this post altogether if Mr. Darren had not identified (accidentally, I’m sure because he doesn’t appear exceptionally bright) our two main techniques for deflating the power of worshipping the enemy – that is over emotionalism and under emotionalism. (Ugh! I hate admitting that anyone could actually worship … whatever!)

Cathartic excess and adrenaline has been one of our most effective weapons, and Mr. Darren has the gall to try to shine his little pen-light of a blog on our secret machinations. This has to be dealt with.

Likewise, he turns his little pitiful blog towards our bulwark of the disconnected recitation of mumblings that the enemy’s minions call the liturgy. He rightly points out that the words in those liturgical writings are noxious to us and are focused on the enemy.

But I’m not worried about the words in their liturgy or the words in their noxious praise songs. We have human nature on our side. And that is where I would like you to focus your efforts.

I am assigning Wormwood to lead this task. Hopefully, he won’t foul this one up.

Here is the plan.

If by chance someone stumbled upon Mr. Darren’s insignificant and pitiful blog, it is ok to let them read it. After they read it begin your work, thusly. Put the following questions into their ever-so-distractable minds:

  1. How many minutes are dedicated in a so-called worship service to their favorite categories: Contemporary vs Traditional vs Liturgical
  2. Did the worship committee pick EXACTLY the same number of contemporary songs vs old songs.
  3. Why is (organ, guitar, saxophone, trumpet, piano, drums) being used? NEVER let them listen unimpeded to the beauty of any musical offering! That beauty (bleh) is from the enemy and is very dangerous to us. Instead, get them to focus on every little missed note, off pitch, etc. These people are pretty pathetic so it is always easy to find distracting bits in the mix.
  4. Why is the pastor using that story, telling that joke, behaving that way, choosing that verse? This overly critical attitude of the “laypeople” is a new tool for us, and it is bearing some excellent fruit. Do your best to eliminate any respect of the pastors because they serve the enemy full time. There’s no telling what those fellas are up to. Especially dangerous to us are those pastors who pray together with each other and their leadership teams and who hold each other accountable. Our people cannot stand to be in the room when they are praying to the enemy, so we have difficulty knowing what they are planning.
  5. Why are we (or aren’t we) offering two worship services? We can operate effectively against the enemy in either of these situations so no matter what they choose to do, we can still distract the members to be bothered by the situation.

The one thing we CANNOT allow under any circumstances, and that is to allow the members of Faith Lutheran Church or any other church to ACTUALLY worship the enemy.

Although I couldn’t bear to read all the writings and analysis Mr. Darren pulled from the so called “holy” writings, I do know he got dangerously close to equating worship with selflessness and sacrifice. This is a very delicate situation, but Mr. Darren has given you the key to distracting a devout worshiper. Notice his martyrial tone. “I will be the one to sacrifice MY desires.” Oh brother! Take this over-dramatic selflessness and insert our secret sauce – pride.

If you can have the devout worshipers become proud of their devotion, then we can derail the whole enterprise.

That’s enough for now.

Don’t mess it up!

-Screwtape

Worship – a layman’s perspective

21 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by D. L. Williams in Church, Liturgy, Worship

≈ 7 Comments

Originally penned on 8/30/2015. Due to the controversial nature of this topic I have sat on it for nearly two years. It’s time to post it and begin the discussion as carefully as I am able.

UPDATE: Be sure to read the comment stream on this post and look at Screwtape’s reaction.

IMG_3534

My Quandary

I am in a congregation that I love, serving youth and young adults that I love, living in a neighborhood that I love, and in a denominational synod that I love.

What is missing from that wonderfully blessed situation?

Worship

I have experienced contemporary worship since I left for college in 1987. I know all the words to every Michael W. Smith, Twila Paris, Amy Grant, Rich Mullins, etc. worship song. Nobody can say I don’t know the contemporary music associated with contemporary worship. I am also familiar with Episcopal (1968 – 1987), Baptist (UT 1987 – 1992), LCMS (1992 – 1997), Methodist (1997 – 2004), and LCMS (2004 – present) theology, hymnody, and worship styles. And by visitation, I have seen Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Assembly of God worship services as well as the myriad of student worship gatherings for the Baptist Student Ministries, the Wesley Foundation, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and CRU.

I have become convinced that these worship methods are strongly targeted to the emotional side of Christianity. I have been told many times by well-meaning brothers and sisters in Christ – layman, laywomen, elders, and pastors that “churches with young people have these types of services”. I have observed this as well. But I have also seen that the laypersons’ Biblical literacy, apologetic ability, and knowledge of the basic theological tenants of the Christian faith are in a pathetic state of decay.

These two trends are related.

“What you win a person WITH, is what you win a person TO.”

– Ravi Zacharias, Christian Evangelist and Apologist

No matter what congregation you are in, pay attention to the next worship music “set” and you will see “the buildup”, “the climax”, and “the afterglow” with an occasional echo of the climax and afterglow. It is a very effective emotional technique. It produces predictable results for those who are drawn into the experience. They get lost in the experience – some laughing, some crying, some simply drowning in the endorphins.

I understand. The world is a crummy, fallen, and heartbreaking mess. We are crummy, fallen, and heartbroken. We need an escape. We need to feel absorbed in the glory of our Lord and what He has done for us. We need to forget the world and our sinful selves as we rest on the Lord’s atonement.

However, escapism doesn’t help me truly deal with Monday-Saturday issues. The Sunday morning high helps me cope. I might even get a midweek booster shot on Wednesday nights. But being won with emotionalism, I am left with emotionalism.

(Please do not dismiss my next few points because of any prejudice on your part against words like Liturgical or Episcopal. That is called the Genetic Fallacy and it prevents you from listening to my POINT because you disagree with my BACKGROUND.)

My earliest worship experiences were in St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Fort Worth, TX. This church uses the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and the liturgical portions were exactly the same Sunday after Sunday. Yet, it was deeply moving without being escapist. I learned to read the big words in those prayers as a child. I learned what inestimable meant. I learned what presume meant. I learned that I was a miserable sinner. It seemed fitting to have a formal “you” (Thou, Thy, and Thee) which was used for God (and God alone since we do not speak this way, today).

What made this worship meaningful to me? I wasn’t sure. After a few years in the Baptist church at UT I began to miss it. I was afraid my longing for it was merely nostalgia for my childhood. Then, I visited the Lutheran Church with my girlfriend (later we were wed there). I heard similar prayers and similar portions of the service with the same strange names – Agnus Dei, Te Deum, Hosanna, etc. Something clicked. I thought growing up that the liturgy of St Andrews was written in 1928. It was not.

Fast forward in my search. Seeing the same portions in the Lutheran and Episcopal service meant the service predated the split between those two. Later I saw the same upon visiting a Roman Catholic church, meaning the service predates the Protestant-Catholic split in 1500 AD. Imagine my surprise when I visited my Greek Orthodox friend’s church and saw the same portions of the service with even the same words in the Kyrie Eleison and Agnus Dei! This predates the East-West split in 1000 AD. I was finally able to pull the thread back to the 70 AD Liturgy of Saint James – brother of Jesus, leader of the first century church in Jerusalem.

  1. K. Chesterton was paraphrased by John F. Kennedy as saying,

“Don’t take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”

The passage he was paraphrasing is:

“There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.”

What IS Worship?

At this point, it is appropriate to ask “What is worship?”

  • Is it a purely escapist emotional experience, a few readings, a message, and some cut-and-paste parts from a loose order of worship?
  • Is it a stiff and stodgy recitation of words written by the forefathers of our forefathers?

Let’s take a detour from opinions and go to the actual words of divine scripture.

From the Blue Letter Bible website

Worship in Hebrew (shachah, Strongs #H7812 is translated in the following manner: worship (99x), bow (31x), bow down (18x), obeisance (9x), reverence (5x), fall down (3x), themselves (2x), stoop (1x), crouch (1x), misc (3x)

Outline of Biblical Usage

  • to bow down
  • (Qal) to bow down
  • (Hiphil) to depress (fig)
  • (Hithpael)
  • to bow down, prostrate oneself
    • before superior in homage
    • before God in worship
    • before false gods
    • before angel

And in Greek (proskyneo, Strongs # G4352 is translated in the following manner: worship (60x).

Outline of Biblical Usage

  • to kiss the hand to (towards) one, in token of reverence
  • among the Orientals, esp. the Persians, to fall upon the knees and touch the ground with the forehead as an expression of profound reverence
  • in the NT by kneeling or prostration to do homage (to one) or make obeisance, whether in order to express respect or to make supplication
  • used of homage shown to men and beings of superior rank
    • to the Jewish high priests
    • to God
    • to Christ
    • to heavenly beings
    • to demons

Jesus linked service to worship in response to Satan’s temptation. The word for service he used is letreuo, Strongs #G3000 in the following manner: serve (16x), worship (3x), do the service (1x), worshipper (1x)

Outline of Biblical Usage

  • to serve for hire
  • to serve, minister to, either to the gods or men and used alike of slaves and freemen
    • in the NT, to render religious service or homage, to worship
    • to perform sacred services, to offer gifts, to worship God in the observance of the rites instituted for his worship
    • of priests, to officiate, to discharge the sacred office

It is clear to me from the outlines and the usages that worship is about bowing down, prostration to God, and service to Him and His wishes.

There is no hint of an emotional high. That does not mean it is emotion-free.

I have often been moved to tears through the words of the various liturgical settings in the Lutheran Church and still when I go back and visit my childhood church home. The distinction is this. The words moved me to tears, yet they were not designed to move me to tears.

The words in that service were not written to move me through any emotional arc. My emotional connection to them is rooted in what they move me to say about myself, what they move me to say about God, and what God has to say to me in His Word.

In “wordy” worship, I am being won “with words” and thus I am won “to words”.

When I need mid-week strength, I don’t need my worship song playlist. I can be fed with the pure Word of God – strengthened and uplifted by the encouraging scriptures that have been incorporated in the order of worship and committed to memory by a lifetime of recitation.

“Come unto me all who travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

“It is more blessed to give than to receive”

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, so that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life.”

And on, and on. (These scripture passages are at the beginning of Morning Prayer.)

One last point

Worship is about sacrifice, and sacrifice comes in many forms. For worship, we sacrifice sleep on the weekend, we sacrifice time, and we sacrifice our resources. Why is it when it comes to worship that we refuse to sacrifice our opinions about what matters in worship? Instead, we insist that WE are right and that OUR wishes are the only ones that will “keep the church alive” or will “bring in young people”.

It is unreasonable for me to ask YOU to sacrifice your opinions, wishes, desires, and yes, even emotional needs.

Unless a compromise can be found, I will do the sacrificing. I will continue to stay in a congregation that I love, serving youth and young adults that I love, living in a neighborhood that I love, and in a denominational synod that I love.

But when the cacophony and emotional arc begins I will sacrifice my preference and my need of meaningful and familiar words and hymnody. There will still be parts of the worship service that speak to me, in the readings, the sermon, the confession, absolution, words of institution, and the creeds. But even if the familiarity is taken away through weekly re-writes, I will continue to see this as my prostration, my worship, and my drink offering to the Lord. And if I get too hungry for the old words, I can always pull the LSB or Book of Common Prayer off the shelf at my house and have my own worship “service” alone with the Lord.

I do ask that I not be insulted by calling my worship “dead”. It is as alive as my Savior Jesus Christ.

Moving Forward with Hope

I appreciate our Pastors’ interest in opening the door to a discussion about worship. I would like to keep the ball moving.

Some objections to deal with up front.

The retort that people fall into a rote recitation is often used as an argument against using the service book for worship, but this is a problem with the worshipper not the words. Leadership should always encourage the congregation to engage the mind and heart when reading responsively.

The same observation can be made of people in praise services checking their phones or standing bored with their hands in their pockets during music sets. It is not consistent to use disengagement as a criticism of any form of worship.

The real issue for us is that there are two preferences in one congregation.

The Solution

The following suggestion would breathe new life into our congregation, because it is something that people have been asking for since 2005. For over ten years, many of us have been asking for a service that allowed us to know exactly what we were going to be doing and saying on Sunday morning so we could throw our full attention into worshipping our Savior.

  • 8:00 AM Divine Service Setting 1 – 5. No video support is needed or desired because it is distracting. The LSB is sufficient for this service. (There are audio files of organ accompaniment for every LSB hymn.)
  • 9:15 AM Sunday School
  • 10:30 AM Sunday Morning Worship

This should not be seen in a negative light. This should not be seen as a defeat or capitulation to those immovable traditionalists. This should not be seen as creating two congregations. There are already two groups attending one service on Sunday morning and two different sets of voices on each type of music.

This should be seen as proactive service of the needs of those who need structure to their worship. This will also provide an outreach opportunity. I predict that the 8 am service will bring people in. I do not know of any no theologically conservative churches in Huntsville who have structured worship on Sunday mornings. Why can’t we provide this for the community? It is an unmet need that we can fill.

If you are worried about structured worship producing dead Christians, then I hope to allay those fears with my very life.

To worship one way or another is a matter of preference on BOTH sides. Please acknowledge that my preference is no less holy than someone else’s.

“19 Therefore, brothers, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way He has opened for us through the curtain (that is, His flesh), 21 and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. 23 Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. 24 And let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, 25 not staying away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. ” [Hebrews 10:19-25 HCSB]

Flexibility in this area by providing two worship forms on Sunday morning will greatly “promote love and good works”, and will express the concern we have for people who are “staying away from our worship meetings” (physically or mentally).

Please receive this long text with the grace and love that went into writing it. I hold NO ill will, nor do I want a worship war. I want peace in the congregation, and I want to proclaim Christ’s love in many ways each week.

Darren

What I Believe and Why

05 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by D. L. Williams in Biography, Campus Apologetics, Church, Ratio Christi

≈ 8 Comments

As Director of Ratio Christi at SHSU, I am always collecting “tough questions”. I want to be sure I am addressing the deepest questions that are percolating below the surface of the students’ calm and cool demeanor.

I also challenge the students to be ready to answer the First Question – “What do you believe and why do you believe it?” So I thought I would put down my answer to this question in blog post form, for them and for you.

Q:           “What do you believe and why do you believe it?”

A:           I’ll answer this in two parts since it is a two part question.

Part 1: What do you believe?

This question is easy to answer in some respects, because it is one that has been at the heart of the church for 2000 years. Since the beginning of the church at Pentecost (Acts 2), the Apostles began spreading the Gospel in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the world.

The early Christian Creeds were succinct statements of the Gospel. Take one of the earliest creedal statements as an example,

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received,

  • that Christ
    • died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,
    • that he was buried,
    • that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and
    • that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” – 1 Corinthians 15: 3-6

I have written it in outline form, which is a useful practice when it comes to creeds. This statement is both an eyewitness report that Jesus bodily rose from the dead, and a theological statement that he died for our sins as predicted by the scriptures (Isaiah 53; Watch this amazing dialog about Isaiah 53 in Israel ).

The creeds grew from very simple to quite elaborate as the Church wrestled with finer theological points. But there is broad agreement that the Apostles’ Creed captures the foundational essentials of orthodox Christianity. To deviate from them is to deviate from Christianity. (In this usage orthodox is to mean authentic, not Eastern Orthodox, etc.)

The Apostles’ Creed

  • I believe in God the Father
    • Almighty,
    • Creator of heaven and earth.
  • I believe in Jesus Christ,
    • his only Son,
    • our Lord.
    • He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
    • and born of the Virgin Mary.
    • He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
    • was crucified,
    • died and
    • was buried.
    • He descended to the dead.
    • On the third day he rose again.
    • He ascended into heaven, and
    • is seated at the right hand of the Father.
    • He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
  • I believe in the Holy Spirit,
  • the holy catholic Church,
  • the communion of saints,
  • the forgiveness of sins,
  • the resurrection of the body, and
  • life everlasting.

Notice how most of the Creed is centered on our physical and temporal experience of “God with us” which is Isaiah’s prophesied name of the Messiah (Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23). Many of these claims are evidential, observable, and testable (at least at the time). Others are theological. All of these claims are Biblical. In fact, there is an EXTENSIVE Bible study on the Apostles Creed here.

And J. Warner Wallace has a nice blog post on early Christian creeds and confessions of faith.

So as a Christian, my simple answer to “What do you believe?” is given to me and to you in the Apostles’ Creed.

Part 2: Why do you believe it?

The “Why do you believe it?” question is subjective and personal. But this is where the conversation gets interesting, especially if we want to discuss our beliefs with others (i.e. evangelism).

Why would I believe some of the outlandish things put forth in the Apostles’ Creed?

My answer has changed over the years, but it has grown stronger, and I think, more compelling. Here is a timeline:

1968 – 73: Infancy and early childhood, I would have no answer to the “why” question, except “my family goes to church”, or “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” from the familiar hymn.

1974 – 80: Through the Sunday school program at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Fort Worth, TX,  I began reading the Bible on my own time, as this was encouraged by my excellent Sunday School teachers. My answer at that time for “why do you believe it?” would have been “because it is in the Bible”.

This is a good answer, by the way. But it requires a second layer of defense, namely an answer to the question, “Why do you believe the Bible is reliable?”

1981 – 92: Through high school and my bachelor’s degree at UT Austin, my faith became more experiential. Emotionally moving worship experiences in both liturgical settings and contemporary settings helped me feel a connection to God. Summer camps, the Baptist student ministry, Chi Alpha at UT, FCA, Longhorn Band Bible study, and ski trips created close knit connections to the Church – the body of believers and the body of Christ on Earth.

My answer for “why do you believe it?” was as warranted as any other belief about a real person. I believed in God because I had “met Him” – in prayer, in worship, in service, in fellowship, and in the church.

This is also a good answer. It is internal confirmation of the Apostles’ Creed articles about the “Holy Spirit” and the “church”. It cannot be easily argued against, because it is experiential.

But it is not very compelling to some because it is experiential. They may not believe that my experience is an indicator of reality about God. I could be deceived or even acculturated to create these feelings in myself to fit into my chosen group – the church.

1993 – present: As a graduate student in Oregon – a very secular part of the country – I was able to see Christianity from “the outside” through the eyes of non-Christians who I met in the billion or so coffee shops and microbreweries in the Northwest. They were happy to let me have my subjective experiential Christian faith. But they were not convinced.

I began to read more Christian apologetics and found a treasure trove of books about and by atheists who became Christians. (For example, my Ratio Christi colleague Joel Furches has blogged about many atheist converts to Christianity, and it was apparently EASY for him to find examples.)

Many of these atheists sought to make an objective and evidential case against Christianity, because they had only heard subjective and emotional arguments like mine such as: – “Christianity is a relationship. Christianity works for me. If you ask me how I know He lives, He lives… within… my heart. (as the hymn goes)”.

I was energized to learn from these converts to Christianity. Their evidential approach convinced them that the Christian truth claims were actually True. I did my best to look at their arguments with “outside eyes”, and I continue to find their arguments compelling.

You may accuse me of confirmation bias, but making an accusation is not the same as making an argument.

Therefore, at the present time, here is my answer to “Why do you believe it?”

  1. The universe had a beginning, and thus must have a cause that was immaterial, powerful, infinitely precise, beyond our conception of time.

The evidence for this comes from astrophysics and cosmology. It essentially gives evidence for the first article of the Apostles’ Creed “God almighty creator of heaven and earth”.

  1. Jesus of Nazareth is a pivotal character in world history.

The claims about him only make sense if he supernaturally rose from the dead. Many of these facts are confirmed using sources outside the Bible. Consider this research using ONLY non-Christian sources done by J. Warner Wallace – an atheist homicide detective who became a Christian after his research.

  1. Warner Wallace writes:

“Let’s review what we’ve learned from hostile pagan and Jewish sources describing Jesus. We’ll do our best to discount the anti-Christian bias we see in the sources, just as we discounted the pro-Christian bias we think might exist in some versions of the writing of Josephus. Many elements of the Biblical record are confirmed by these hostile accounts, in spite of the fact they deny the supernatural power of Jesus:

Jesus was born and lived in Palestine. He was born, supposedly, to a virgin and had an earthly father who was a carpenter. He was a teacher who taught that through repentance and belief, all followers would become brothers and sisters. He led the Jews away from their beliefs. He was a wise man who claimed to be God and the Messiah. He had unusual magical powers and performed miraculous deeds. He healed the lame. He accurately predicted the future. He was persecuted by the Jews for what He said, betrayed by Judah Iskarioto. He was beaten with rods, forced to drink vinegar and wear a crown of thorns. He was crucified on the eve of the Passover and this crucifixion occurred under the direction of Pontius Pilate, during the time of Tiberius. On the day of His crucifixion, the sky grew dark and there was an earthquake. Afterward, He was buried in a tomb and the tomb was later found to be empty. He appeared to His disciples resurrected from the grave and showed them His wounds. These disciples then told others Jesus was resurrected and ascended into heaven. Jesus’ disciples and followers upheld a high moral code. One of them was named Matthai. The disciples were also persecuted for their faith but were martyred without changing their claims. They met regularly to worship Jesus, even after His death.

Not bad, given this information is coming from ancient accounts hostile to the Biblical record. While these non-Christian sources interpret the claims of Christianity differently, they affirm the initial, evidential claims of the Biblical authors (much like those who interpret the evidence related to Kennedy’s assassination and the Twin Tower attacks come to different conclusions but affirm the basic facts of the historical events). Is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Bible? Yes, and the ancient non-Christian interpretations (and critical commentaries) of the Gospel accounts serve to strengthen the core claims of the New Testament.” –JWW

So without even using the Bible, we could confirm the main points of the second article of the Apostles’ Creed.

This is the center pole of the tent of Christianity. If Jesus is who he claims to be, then we get ALL OF SCRIPTURE in the mix. He quotes the Old Testament. The reason why he came is prophesied in the Old Testament.

These prophesies MUST BE FALSE if there is no God, and only nature exists. But if Jesus rose SUPERNATURALLY from the dead, then there is a supernatural realm, and the Bible becomes the best source for learning about God, the Holy Spirit, and all the other theological points – not because we like it, but because archaeology affirms the Biblical accounts over and over again.

  1. There REALLY is a right and wrong.
    1. Objective moral laws require a moral lawgiver with authority, namely God.
    2. Objective moral laws exist.
    3. Therefore, a moral lawgiver with authority (God) exists.

This syllogism is invincible. In fact, one can find atheists who support a. and deny b. And one can find atheists who support b. and deny a. One rarely finds an atheist who supports both a. and b. because that would make them a theist, or an internally conflicted atheist who ignores his own cognitive dissonance. (This is not much of a slight, though. We all tend to suppress cognitive dissonance. Hopefully, this post is causing some positive cognitive dissonance, for you.)

This moral framework is evidence for portions of the Apostles’ Creed as well – “at the right hand of the Father” (authority), “judge the living and the dead” (moral law breakers), “forgiveness of sins” (reconciliation with God), “everlasting life” (eternal reconciliation with God).

In Summary

What do you believe? – The Apostles’ Creed is a concise statement of my Christian convictions. I also accept the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Augsburg Confession, and I am a member of Faith Lutheran Church LCMS in Huntsville, Texas.

Why do you believe it? – It is the best evidential description of reality – the way the world ACTUALLY is.

Bonus question,

What does this mean?

Wow! This means God REALLY loves me and YOU. We have been in rebellion against him through our self-centered desires. This rebellion will eventually lead to our permanent rejection of all Godly things – the antithesis of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But God himself took the punishment we deserved, thus healing the sickness of sin that brings death. All we must do is consider the claims of the Apostles’ Creed – that through Jesus’ death and resurrection, our dead bodies can be made newly alive. If we accept the cure that he provides, we will live.

If you don’t believe it, yet, that’s understandable. But chew on it.

Don’t ignore your questions. Ignoring spiritual questions is worse than ignoring chest pain.

Image: Time Flies (tempus fugit)

By Nheyob – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

 

Tempus fugit.

Darren

Newer posts →

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • September 2020
  • July 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • April 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • August 2015
  • February 2015
  • September 2014
  • August 2014

Categories

  • Biography
  • C.S. Lewis
  • Campus Apologetics
  • Church
  • Education
  • Grief, Death, and Dying
  • Historiography
  • Literature
  • Liturgy
  • Philosophy
  • Podcasts
  • Prayer
  • Ratio Christi
  • Reality Blog
  • Sexual Ethics
  • Uncategorized
  • Worship

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Apologetics4all - Dr. Williams' Religion Blog
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Apologetics4all - Dr. Williams' Religion Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...