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But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: while we were sinners, Christ died for us. -Rom 5.8 Four out of the last seven times I've prayed publicly (that is, with other people), I somehow found myself saying this or something similar to this line: "...and we thank you that you love us because-" And then I'll awkwardly stumble around with my words before getting back into stride. I can't believe I've never thought about this, but there's really no easy way to answer that question. asking "why does God love us?" gets at the heart of unconditional love. There's no reason or rhyme to it. It's absurd. The only explanation I can think of is Ephesians 1.11-12 "In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory." So ultimately God's lo...

I don't read many Christian dating books; I've read through Joshua Harris and dabbled with Dobson, but most of my knowledge of romance has been gained from life's most brutal teacher. That and mentor's. But I've always found it odd when Christians I trust, MARRIED Christians I trust, ask me if I have God's "gift of singleness". Anyone else find it weird that what would have been an aberration in idyllic, prelapsarian existence is now considered... a gift? In Eden, if you were single, you were lonely, and you weren't single for long. Why is it that now we're on the other side of the cherubim, the ONLY THING in Genesis 1-2 that wasn't considered good by God...is now a gift? And then those well-meaning, but married men and women will say, "You don't understand what it's like to be married. Sure it's wonderful (they whisper that part shamefully), but there are so many things that you can't do once you have to take care of s...

it's a bittersweet symphony, this life. you get a diploma, you try to get married, you die. I’ve been thinking about death a lot recently. The thoughts creep up on me and catch me unawares, when I'm eating alone, doing my devotions, playing Madden NFL. Once or twice they emerge in the middle of a dream and balloon into an anxiety great enough to rouse me from slumber. But, most of the time, I’d say they catch me right before I lay down to rest and right after I rise to wake. They don't command my attention for too long; just long enough to remind me that I still need to deal with it. I think this all started after my dog Lucky died just over a month ago. I forced myself not to grieve because I was still away at school and finals was just about to begin. When I got back, I never really did give myself enough time to think about it and get over it. So perhaps now these thoughts and emotions are finally leaking through the barriers I erected to protect my conscious awareness. ...

[Read this only if you like philosophy] The great Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton had this idea that of all the central Christian doctrines, sin is the only one that is empirically evident. That means that, of all of our core beliefs (God's sovereignty, human sin and error, the Incarnation, the atonement of the cross), the idea that there is evil is the most provable based on observations of the world around us. I think there are some hard-headed Nietzscheans and the like who would reject the notions of good and evil, but these are philosophical idealists. I also think that, for the most part, all the upper echelons of philosophical academia have abandoned this notion of "absolute moral relativism". Heck, I'd even make the argument that moral relativism in its purest form was never even an idea entertained by any respectable thinker. "Everything is relative; there is no absolute moral law" is not embraced by anyone but misled and misinformed Stuyvesant stud...

_ As indebted as I am to my alma mater, I'm kind of mad at Gordon College's great books honor course because it took the name that I was originally going to use as the title to my blog: The "Jerusalem Athens Forum". I realized while writing my last college philosophy paper (ever) that the things that I am most passionate towards- that which I spend the most time thinking and reading about- all have to do with the mediation of faith and reason. _ In this blog I'd like to explore the issues of "reason verse revelation", "science verse religion", "unreasonable faith" and "unfaithful reason". My aim is mainly cathartic; I want to use this place to dump the questions and issues that I think about all the time. But it is also didactic; I hope to be able to educate and challenge those who are reading, especially the Christians, to think more deeply about their faith. Not more academically or scholarlily, mind you, but dee...