θαυμάζω

It's been a while since my last attempt to be true to the purpose of my blog. A couple of times, I've dabbled with topics that deal with reason and revelation and the doubts of my faith, but nothing I've written so far can really count as sincere wrestling; not the direct wrestling with divine issues that I had hoped to accomplish for this blog. I think my reasons for staying so shallow on this blog thus far are two parts laziness, two parts fear, and one part I honestly don't know where to start. Well I've decided to get over my laziness. I don't know what it is I truly fear about writing my thoughts. One part is, I am anxious about people knowing that I struggle with such deep-seated doubts concerning my faith. Another part is, some of the things I believe and some of the things that I claim will be considered far-fetched, theologically unsound, doctrinally dangerous, and even blasphemous, especially because I am associated with such an orthodox, reformed chur...

I've been thinking about absolutes a lot. The current album I'm obsessed with is "Absolutes" by Barcelona. I've been thinking about the need for absolutes as a defining part of my psycho-social constitution; as THE defining part of my formation that makes me what I am: A conservative, reformed-evangelical, Bible-believing, Chicago statement of inerrancy-signing Christian. But since I haven't worked out anything specific in that area, I'll just share one of my earlier thoughts regarding absolutes. "Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I will do what I must" : Obi-Wan Kenobi, in Star Wars Episode III, referring to the evil Anakin Skywalker. "Deals in absolutes --> Sith Lord" : Obi-Wan Kenobi, as rendered by the rules of Western formal logic. "All who deals in absolutes are Sith Lords" : Obi-Wan Kenobi, as rendered by the rules of Aristotelian formal logic. "All A are B" : One of the templates of a universal statement, or...

A repost of an excerpt from Chuck's blog . "It is an interesting observation on today's religious climate that many people now get every bit as steamed up about insisting that 'all religions are just the same' as older dogmaticians did about insisting on particular formulations and interpretations. The dogma that all dogmas are wrong, the monolithic insistence that all monolithic systems are to be rejected, has taken hold of the popular imagination at a level far beyond rational or logical discourse. The 'remote god' view encourages it: if god is, or the gods are, far away and largely unknowable, all human religions must be vague approximations, different paths up the same mountain (and all paths get lost in the mist quite soon anyway). Equally, the pantheism that sees 'god' as the divine or sacred aspect within the present world leads ultimately in the same direction: if all religions are responding the to 'the sacred' in this sense, they a...

I am fully convinced that there are people out there who can learn more about the world by going out and mowing the lawn than other people do after four years of college and four years of grad school. Perhaps the fresh, earthly smell of cut grass will cause this person to ponder the beauty of the natural world. Upon reflecting on nature, he'll be reminded of Psalm 19 and be led to ruminate on the theology of general revelation. One doctrine will remind him of another doctrine and before he stows his lawnmower away in his garage, he will have discovered new truths about the world around him and the God that created it. That's one way I imagine a person can go about doing household chores. Last week, I wrote about habits of reading and how poorly we Christians read our Bible. The truth is, there was nothing particularly spiritual in my criticism. I honestly think we as a culture are just horrendously inadequate when it comes to basic intellectual skills. Today, when I went to the...