Gaffigan seems to realize that he does have a voice in the realm of religious conversation—as evidenced from the The Jim Gaffigan Show—but his more organic approach to the intersection between his personal life and comedy creates a natural, rather than explicit, response to religious conversation and the culture wars. He’s a comedian who’s also a Christian, rather than a Christian who happens to be a comedian.
More often than not, when I talk to twentysomethings who are seriously contemplating walking away from their faith, the main stumbling block is an intellectual one. My faith didn’t have the deep intellectual roots necessary to flourish outside of a youth group setting. For many twentysomethings, the moment the intellectual credibility of faith is challenged and there’s no immediately satisfying answer, they’re out. This is where a robust understanding and deep study of Church history became my lifeboat.
The faith of my youth had mainly been informed by emotional altar calls and evangelical clichés; neither of these components are inherently wrong, but this culture alone wasn’t enough for me to face an increasingly secular world. Through their writings, ancient Church fathers became like mentors who helped me see that the doubts we wrestle with today are the same questions those who came before us struggled with too. Studying Church history can help us develop a strong sense of what Dr. Duke calls our “intergenerational self.” Or, as Feiler puts it, we begin to understand that we’re part of something much bigger than ourselves.
A previous video discussed the big ideas of Romans 1-4. This video explains the remainder of the book of Romans. Many people find the book of Romans difficult to understand, but these videos make the big ideas of the book much easier to grasp. Enjoy… (more…)
John Lennox tackles the question of miracles and the existence of the supernatural at Harvard’s Veritas Forum. He’s an engaging and entertaining speaker, not to mention a top notch scholar. (more…)
But what if the very things I want for my life—including health and wealth—are the worst things for me right now? What if God—filled with love and wisdom—is deliberately, kindly, and gently weaning me from the liquid poison I slurp down every day? What if he does know best?
My battle in life is to believe God loves me more than I do, and he is proving it.
God provided the grace, faith received the gift. Jesus connected personal faith in Him to our eternal salvation. But Jesus also demanded good works to go along with faith.
Then there is St. Paul. The apostle is known as the foremost advocate of justification by faith. St. Paul is not opposing faith to ethical works but to the “works of the Law.”
When we come to Christ as sinners, we have no works to offer to Him, but only faith and repentance. But once we come to Him and receive the gift of salvation, we enter into a sacred covenant to honor Him with good works.
Many in this age of secularism will go about claiming that they are not “religious.” It seems that many believe that a person is not religious as long as they keep their distance from one of the major faith traditions of the world (e.g. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc.). This clever web comic exposes the faulty assumption that subscribing to a major world religion is what makes one religious. In reality, every person who believes something, anything at all, is religious…
I believe that one of the essential jobs of the local church is to equip Christian parents to take the lead in spiritually training their children. Passing faith to our kids is not the church’s job – it is ours as parents.
But what about all the unsaved kids who don’t have Christian parents to disciple them?
The intersection of science and religion clearly has the power to capture the public’s attention, but collisions can happen at that intersection. Is there a way for scientific and religious communities to work together more productively?
We have found that many scientists (both secular and religious) as well as evangelical leaders feel there is something amiss about communication between scientists and religious people, but their lives often never cross paths.
Surprisingly, many people don’t reject Christianity because they’ve given up on God. Instead, they’ve given up on the people and things that represent God. They don’t hate Jesus, they just become tired of not finding Him within Christian culture.
As Christians, we sometimes mistakenly try to compensate for God by presenting our faith as easier than it really is. We cover up the ugliness and hardship of authentic faith.
I still thought I had to attain a certain spiritual level of awesomeness before I could really receive grace.
That was until I read Roman 4:5, which I’d read plenty of times before, but that particular night God made it jump out of the page: “and to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” Romans 4:5
Oxford Theoretical physicist Ard Louis explains his own view of how science and faith relate to each other – one that recognises the fact that faith influences the whole of life. Ard gives examples to show how this affects the way he conducts his work and relationships with his colleagues.
Kepler believed that there was an art and orderliness in God’s creation and that the more Christians recognized the greatness of creation, the deeper their worship would be. Didn’t God himself encourage the heathen to look carefully at creation so that they might come to know God? The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics. In his astronomical research, Kepler only wanted to, as he put it, “think God’s thoughts after Him.”
Virtually every time I catch wind of the phrase — “leaving church” — almost always, the person using the phrase never explains what he/she means by “church.”
A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost faith. They are leaving the church to preserve their faith.
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We might read the gospels and see all the crazy things Jesus did and we may think to ourselves, “I could never do that.” And yet Jesus has this to say:
“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” – John 14:12
We learn from the example of Saul/Paul (and numerous others) that it is folly to utter the phrase “I could never do that.” In fact, it is heresy. It represents a denial of the Lordship of Jesus and a capitulation to the American narrative of personal comfort.
When calling his disciples, Jesus told them to drop their nets and follow him. The Waller family took that same call very seriously. This documentary follows a family as they leave behind the comforts of a stable job and home in favor of an agrarian lifestyle in rural Tennessee. The story of the Waller family is inspiring as disciples of Jesus ask what it looks like to respond with faith to his call.