If you had 3.1 million dollars, what would you do with it?

A group of researchers have decided to use their millions to find God, or, as the article puts it, the biological reasons why people believe in God:

Religion cries out for a biological explanation. It is a ubiquitous phenomenon—arguably one of the species markers of Homo sapiens—but a puzzling one. It has none of the obvious benefits of that other marker of humanity, language. Nevertheless, it consumes huge amounts of resources.

Interesting. Have a look at the article, there are a few neat experiments that these folks have in mind.

A buddy of mine sent me an article in the Washington Post about recent thinking in how old the Grand Canyon (the one in Arizona not the one in Pennsylvania in case you were confused) is. The article states that there is debate as to whether the pothole-relative-from-space is 5 million years old or 17 million years old. No doubt this makes a difference because when you find objects at different sediment levels, you date them relative to the age of the sediment you found them in and each sediment is dated based on its surroundings. So, the actual age of the Grand Canyon will have some effect on these ages. Nowhere in the article do you find any discussion of “creationism” or any such derivatives, this article is purely informative from a scientific viewpoint and does not attempt to crush any debates, which is a great compliment to the reporter.

Then I read the readers’ comments.

The very first comment on the article was this:

Hey, I thought the Grand Canyon is only a few thousand years old because it was formed during the Great Flood!

At least that’s what a minister once told me. Perhaps he was wrong?

The first one! I kept reading, they’re all the same. Everyone wanted to mock young-earth creationism. This is instantly on the minds of a lot of people, myself included from the other perspective, when they read through any article related to dinosaurs, evolution, geological ages, etc. Why is this? Why do people skip over the content of the article and head directly to the hot topics, the ones that are controversial?

Maybe we can say that deep down, people feel like if they can debunk the truthfulness of the Bible, they don’t have to believe it or the author of it. The Bible says that creation speaks of God’s workmanship and that man has looked upon God’s creation and suppressed the truth that God was the one behind it. So, the burden of proof is not on Christians to defend the creation aspects of the Bible. God has taken this upon Himself.

But, this certainly does not mean that we should give up on pursuing these aspects of study. Christians have been at the forefront of the study of God’s creation (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Faraday, etc.) for a long time. Without their studies, the world would be lacking in the most basic things we take for granted today (the earth revolving around the sun for example). The study of the sciences and God’s creation should point us to God, never away.

Now it’s your turn to comment. Are Christians the cause of some of this? Have we made too big an issue of creation/evolution and caused that to be a great dividing line? Do you think this is a worthy dividing line?

Scot McKnight has a series of posts looking at Francis Collins’ book The Language of God. The posts are well-written and well-researched and the comments add a great deal to the discussion.

• Post #1
• Post #2
• Post #3
• Post #4

Having gained quite a few readers recently, I should say that a link to a post is not always an agreement with a post…

There is an interesting verse in Romans 1:15, Paul says, “I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.” The reason this is so interesting is because just a few sentences earlier in his greeting he had addressed the folks he was writing “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints.” If he was writing to Christians, why would he tell them he was eager to come and preach the gospel to them? They were already believers, why do they need to hear that again?

To answer that, let’s look at what Paul says about the gospel. In 1:16 he calls the gospel the power of God for salvation to everyone that believes. So, he recognizes the gospel’s saving power as something that comes directly from God. And what are the benefits of this salvation? Well, in this letter Paul describes how sinful man is and how we all try to make up for our sins in various ways, trying to be good in God’s eyes. Recognizing just what the gospel saves you from is something you want to remember. Then he says that even though they are sinners, Christ died for them to pay the penalty they deserved and that even though they still have sin in their lives they are no longer enslaved to that sin but they are joined with Jesus Christ to be free from that bondage. Then he encourages them in that they have the Holy Spirit to pray for them when things are so hard in this life that they won’t even know how to pray, that since it is God who removes their sins they can stand in the face of pure evil and laugh when their sin tries to make them believe God doesn’t love them anymore, that they will face trials and sufferings and even physical death but that NOTHING will ever separate them from the love of God, that He has been working this entire plan since He invented time and that it will finish exactly how He wants it to. Do you think this is something they needed to have preached to them again? How often do you need to hear this?

“And there they continued to preach the gospel” - Acts 14:7

Each Tuesday a different reflection on the gospel and its continual effect on our lives

The Truth of the Cross
by R.C. Sproul
Reformation Trust, 2007

Overview

The cross has been the center of discussion and debate since the early beginnings of Christianity. What exactly happened that night? Did it even have to happen? What was Jesus going through as it happened? Who benefits from what happened on the cross? These are the simplified versions of some very complex theological questions arising from our understanding of Christ’s work on the cross but if you think about it, so much of the way you live the Christian life is rooted in what you believe really took place on the cross. The author himself spells out how important this is in his comment

If you take away the cross as an atoning act, you take away Christianity.

Outline

R.C. Sproul’s most recent book The Truth of the Cross checks in at about 167 pages, a quick read if you are willing but certainly not sparse in depth. When the cross is discussed, normally you would hear the words atonement, justification, sacrifice, redemption, substitution, debt, suffering, and hell. Amazingly enough, you will find all of these topics covered in this book in a way that RC is well-known for: easy to understand but never lacking in thought-provoking theology.

Obviously in a shorter book like this it is difficult to thoroughly examine all of these topics but that wasn’t the author’s intent. The author seems to have written an introductory book, giving the reader who may have questions about the cross or maybe hasn’t ever studied some of these topics a good overview of the subject.

Although the book answers a lot of questions throughout its first nine chapters, I particularly enjoyed the tenth chapter, “Questions and Answers”. Some great questions are asked and RC briefly responds with just enough to cover the question but leaves the reader to ponder some more and, hopefully, dig into the Bible for more answers. I wish more authors provided a Q&A section within their books; a mini-catechism of sorts. This also serves as a good quick-reference guide to the book written in a much more readable form.

Summary

This is a great book for those looking for a quick introduction to the questions they have about the cross and some of the more theological terms associated with it. But of course, this would be an excellent book for anyone who has studied the cross but loves to hear the story again and again.

I’m sorry to be posting this so late, but the guys at T4G have been giving away admissions to the T4G ‘08 conference if they appreciate your answer to a series of questions they have been posting. Have a look here.

A very brief auto-biographic article in Christianity Today tells of J.I.Packer’s desire to recount his blessings/surprises from God. From the article:

Paul, discipling converts, harps constantly on the virtue, duty, and (by implication) blessing of constant giving of thanks to God. “Be filled with the Spirit … always giving thanks to God the Father for everything” (Eph. 5:18, 20).

Read it here. (HT: JT)

From the Ligonier website:

Nearly half the population of the United States claims to be “born-again.” Self-identified “evangelicals” are a voting bloc courted by our major political parties, and a large percentage of citizens attend church services at least once a week. Yet, as we look at the culture around us, an unmistakable erosion of the Judeo-Christian ethic has taken place. God is regularly blasphemed, professing believers often live no differently from non-Christians, and many churches are captive to the trends of this present age.

On March 13-15, 2008, Ligonier Ministries will hold its 21st annual national conference, “Evangelism According to Jesus,” in Orlando, Fla. During three days of worship, fellowship, encouragement, study, and prayer, we will proclaim the different aspects of the Gospel and explain how they must impact our evangelism. Joining us will be respected pastors, theologians, and leaders Sinclair Ferguson, Steven J. Lawson, John MacArthur, C.J. Mahaney, R.C. Sproul Jr., and Joni Eareckson Tada, all of whom will remind us of the great truths of the Gospel and help us evangelize more effectively.

• You can access live webcasts of the conference here.
• Read Tim Challies’ live blogging at the conference here.
• Read Alex Chediak’s live blogging at the conference here.
• Read everything conference related here.
• Read something completely non-conference-related here.

The Associated Press is running a story today with the details of a handwritten letter found in the car of the Colorado gunman who killed 4 people in Dec. 2007. I can’t seem to find a copy of the whole letter but the bits and pieces found in the article are difficult to read: “Jesus, where are you? Do you even care these days?”, “What have I done so wrong? What is wrong with me anyways? Am I really such a bad person?”, and the most telling “Am I too lost to be saved? My soul cries for deliverance. I’m dieing (sic), praying, bleeding and screaming. Will I be denied???”.

How many millions have these same thoughts?

I wonder though, if someone were to share similar thoughts with you as a reason they didn’t believe, what would you say to them?  It would be great to get some discussion going on this topic so maybe I can start off with a few things.

• Am I too lost to be saved? Two Scripture passages come to mind, Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” and Luke 23:39-43 where the thief condemned on the cross cries out to Jesus and Jesus assures him he would join him in heaven. One passage gives clear teaching that Christ died for unworthy sinners, not somewhat worthy sinners or sinners with a little bit of good in them. There is no distinction here, it says that Christ died for those who needed salvation the most. The other passage gives an example of a man who was so lost in his sins that he was sent to his death but yet Jesus still assures him that his sins will be forgiven. The condemned sinner has no chance to prove his salvation by living a good life afterwards, he died in a few hours.
• Will I be denied? Romans 10:13 (quoting Joel 2:32) “for ‘whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved’”. This is pretty clear teaching that God will deny no one who calls on him for salvation. I think we need to be careful here though, Jesus talks about people who try and get in through a back door by believing in Jesus but still attempting to work their way into heaven by their good works in Matthew 7:21-23. Salvation is of the Lord (Jonah 2:9), it is not of man’s good works.
• What have I done so wrong? Again, Romans 1:23 says we all have exchanged the glory of God for an idol. We have all traded what is infinitely valuable for what is worthless. Everyone has done this, everyone has sinned against God. It is important to talk about our sinful nature and not our individual sins though. People easily get hung up on a one-time sin they did a long time ago, or they are caught up in a repetitive habit of the same sin over and over and can’t get past this. But, it’s not like God overlooks all the other smaller dirt and just focuses on the mud pile so that if you could just find forgiveness for the one big sin everything would be ok. All of these sins we commit are the evidence of our sinful nature, our bent towards doing the opposite of what we know to be the right thing to do. We need salvation from our sinful selves and Christ promises to forgive all sins.

Now it’s your turn, would you say things differently? What else would you say? The gunman also asked, Why couldn’t you write your (expletive) book more clearly?” What would you say to that?

Sorry for the sneaky title. Ligonier is offering a free PDF of some of their books if you agree to review it on your blog. After they review your…review…they will send you a free hard-copy of the same book you wrote about. I picked up The Truth of the Cross in PDF format and easily put it on my Kindle (look for a review soon). Then I realized that Reformation Trust doesn’t offer their books on the Kindle but they obviously have PDF versions readily available. This then lead to the obvious question; Why don’t more publishers offer electronic versions of their books if they have them? I realize there is a lot to the publishing world I don’t know about so please excuse my ignorance in this matter. I’m not just looking to get every book on my Kindle, I just think a lot of folks would love to have a PDF copy of the hard-copy books they purchase. This way you could read the hard-copy books on paper but also have the ability to use the PDF as a search-able reference document for later studies (not all of us have Al Mohler’s uncanny ability to memorize every book he reads).

Does anyone have some insight into this?