thought exercise on Cynics

Reject Christianity, if you will, out of motives of cynicism; turn away from it because you believe. Reality is malign and punitive; choose a God that is cantankerous, vindictive, or forgetful, or det...

The BuzzFeed-style quiz is taking over the internet, serving up answers to questions no one is asking. What Star Wars character are you? What restaurant trend describes your personality? Which Hogwart...

Katja, our seven-year-old granddaughter, stepped in it, as they say. She had doggie droppings on the bottom of her tennies. Not just one foot, mind you, but both. Her mother, Maureen, suggested she le...

Have you ever noticed that some people hide their kindness? Fred Allen, an American comedian and writer, would always hide behind his own cynicism after performing a kind act. One time Allen rushed ou...

The New Testament scholar Craig Evans makes a compelling observation about how the academy can sometimes hinder the church through overly skeptical scholarship: Some scholars seem to think that th...

Writer Michael Novak says that doubt is not so much a dividing line that separates people into different camps, as it is a razor’s edge that runs through every soul. Many believers tend to think doubt...

Those not familiar with ancient Greek philosophy may be surprised to find deep resonance with the teachings of Jesus. When on trial for his life, the 70-year-old Socrates pugnaciously responded that,...

Jesus, as always, gets caught in the middle—along with a good number of his followers. Many people in America today were brought up in strict Christian homes and churches of one sort or another. There...

The Athenian general and politician Themistocles eventually alienated a large number of Greek City-States that came under their rule in the late 6th and early 5th centuries B.C. With his fleet of ship...

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...

In an attempt to engage in critical thinking, scholars suggest asking whether our opinions are true by simply asking if the opposite could be true. This practice (I’m not joking) is named after on an ...

The story is told of Socrates walking through the market in Athens, with its groaning abundance of options, and saying to himself, “Who would have thought that there could be so many things that I can...

From a historical perspective it is atheism that was old and the Christian faith and its good news that burst on the world as new. Once commonly called “atomism,” the genealogy of atheism can be trace...

A sour outlook is pessimistic about the future. Such people are always anxious, fretful, gloomy, negative, seemingly hopeless. How can a Christian be like that? We should be radiant with hope, fully e...

There may have been a time when people found it easy to believe anything. But we are finding it vastly easier to disbelieve anything. Both processes save the human mind from the disgusting duty of dis...

Have you ever noticed that the phrases in our culture favor doubt over faith? The famed missionary and theologian Lesslie Newbigin pointed this out when we speak of “Honest doubts” and “blind faith”. ...

In the mid-2000s, a Trans-Atlantic movement emerged, characterized by a rejection of organized religion and the ascent of what came to be known as the “New Atheism.” This trend gained notable traction...

Modern man is “a bleak business…To our chagrin we discover that the declaration of autonomy has issued not in a race of free, masterly men, but rather in a race that can be described by its poets and ...

Pragmatism may be defined simply as the approach to reality that defines truth as “that which works.” The pragmatist is concerned about results, and the results determine the truth. The problem with t...

Bumper stickers—and their counterparts on social media—make Simplicism seem virtuous: “Look at me! I’m a good and brave person for distilling this complex issue down to its essence and righteously tak...

The more complicated the landscape, the more the wanderer relies on patience. The more confusing the scene, the more tolerant his outlook becomes. He not only has an awareness of his own ignorance, bu...

Erik Thoennes, professor at Biola University and elder at Grace Evangelical Free Church in La Mirada, California, sees the authenticity trend in the undergrads he teaches. At the beginning of each cla...

Leo Tolstoy, the great writer, famously renounced his inherited wealth and chose to live as an ascetic and hermit in his later years. One of his disciples, a writer named Chertkov, was a wealthy arist...

Probably nobody has hated the ‘softness’ of the Sermon on the Mount more than Friedrich Nietzsche. Although the son and the grandson of Lutheran pastors, he rejected Christianity during his student da...

In another day and age, God, religion and church enjoyed the general respect of the culture. Not today. Religion is suspect, church is weird, and Christians are hypocrites. Distrust has become the nor...

Even though it’s now associated with him, Nietzsche didn’t coin the phrase God is dead. As the son of a Lutheran pastor, he would have heard that line in a Lutheran Holy Saturday hymn. And although...

One of the areas often missed in a lot of Christian apologetics is the social setting in which a person encounters the gospel. For example, it is far easier to espouse "rational arguments" f...

In The Sickness unto Death , Kierkegaard describes a “moment” familiar to all of us. It is the “little tiny transition from having understood to doing.” Here’s what he says about it: …if a person d...

We may find it hard to believe Jeremiah’s words that the heart is “deceitful above all things.” We would rather look outward and think, Yes, others may be quite foolish and misguided. But I have a ...

Faith and pessimism are incompatible. To be sure, we are not starry-eyed idealists; we are down to earth realists. We know well that sin is ingrained in human nature and in human society. We are not e...