Arts and Culture on Doubt

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We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.

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Heavenly Father, it is astounding how

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Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church

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Heavenly Father, it is astounding how many ways we find to doubt You. At times we doubt Your power and Your ability to do actual miracles in our lives. In other situations, we doubt that Your methods ...

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Heavenly Father, forgive us for delving

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Scripture

John 20:24-29, John 8:1-11, Luke 15:11-32, Romans 8:26-27, Matthew 11:28-30, Isaiah 41:10

Heavenly Father, forgive us for delving so much into our own lives that we forget the love and purpose with which you have created us. When we are faced with doubt and despair, help us to turn to you ...

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Consider the Culture

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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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...

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Constant sustainer, you are the

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Austin D. Hill

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Constant sustainer, you are the ultimate source of life. You tell us in your word that every good and perfect gift comes from you. You also tell us that even the birds of the air are provided for. But...

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Timothy Keller

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A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will ...

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Charles Taylor

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Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in [the twenty-first century] many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?

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Ronald Rohlheiser

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Christianity is without doubt the earthiest of all religions. Unlike most other religions, it doesn’t call you out of the physical, out of the body, or out of the world. Rather it tells you that God e...

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Understanding Cultural Identity

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Daniel Hill

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No writer has had a greater impact on my understanding of cultural identity than Dr. Beverly Tatum. …When introducing cultural identity (or racial identity, a term she uses synonymously), Tatum tells...

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The Madman and Killing God

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Brian Zahnd

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Scripture

Genesis 11:1-9, Exodus 32:1-35, Amos 8:11-12, Matthew 27:45-46, Romans 1:18-25, Psalm 14:1

In 1882—seven years before his descent into madness—Friedrich Nietzsche published a parable called The Madman . In the parable, a madman comes into a village on a bright, sunny morning holding al...

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It Just Happened

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Genesis 1:1-31, Psalm 90:1-3, Psalm 33:6-9, Hebrews 11:3, Colossians 1:16

Robert Ingersoll, the well-known agnostic, once visited Henry Ward Beecher, the abolitionist and celebrated American preacher of the time. While there, he noticed a stunning globe that displayed the s...

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The Issue of Money

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In his book on the subject, Philip Yancey describes the tension he himself deals with as a Christian related to money: Many Christians have one issue that haunts them and never falls silent: for som...

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Eternal and Generous God, Every good

Author

Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church

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Scripture

Psalm 23:1, Romans 8:32, Luke 6:38, Psalm 34:10, 2 Corinthians 9:8, Philippians 4:19, James 1:17

Eternal and Generous God, Every good gift comes from You. Your generosity is expressed best Through Jesus, the Crucified and Risen One, Who gave Himself for us. We acknowledge we often doubt Your will...

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Doubting Santa’s Existence?

Author

Hannah Fry and Thomas Oléron Evans

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Scripture

Hebrews 11:1, 2 Corinthians 5:7, Matthew 18:3-4, Psalm 8:3-4, Proverbs 3:5-6

It is astonishing that some people still doubt the existence of Santa Claus. Despite the vast amount of photographic evidence, the hundreds of annual reports on Father Christmas’s activities from perf...

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The Value of a Stradivarius & our Answering our True Calling

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The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Exodus 35:39, Ecclesiastes 9:10, Colossians 3:23, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Psalm 127:1-2

Have you ever heard of a Stradivarius violin? It’s the gold standard of violins—instantly recognizable and famously expensive. These aren’t $29.95 instruments. One sold for $1 million, another for $4 ...

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An Appeal for Mercy at the Heart of our Faith

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

James 2:13, Titus 3:5, Hebrews 4:16, Ephesians 2:4-5, Lamentations 3:22-23, Matthew 5:7

When Johann Sebastian Bach sought to convey the heart of Christian truth through music, he chose the Mass as his foundation. His B Minor Mass begins with a heartfelt plea from the full chorus and orch...

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Easter Island and The Collapse of a Society

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Jonathan A. Moo and Robert S. White

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Jan Boersema has argued that even one of the icons of environmental catastrophe, the “collapse” of civilization on Easter Island, was probably not nearly so abrupt or catastrophic as many assume. It i...

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Author

Søren Kierkegaard

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Individualism

That there may be some who need coercion, who if given free rein would riot in selfish pleasure like unbridled beasts, is no doubt true, but one should show precisely by the fact that one knows how to...

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Can Americans Teach Others about Religion?

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Mark A. Noll

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Even more germane to the concerns of this book, it is important to remember how the American concern for enumerating Christian work can look to non-Americans. Kanzo Uchimura (1861-1930) was a Japanese...

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The Anatomy of a Crisis: Sermon Illustration Thursday

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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All crises are judgments of history that call into question an existing state of affairs. They sift and sort the character and condition of a nation and its capacity to respond. The deeper the crisis,...

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Truth We Can Touch By Tim Chester Book Review

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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April 2020 is an interesting time to write a book review on the sacraments (or anything, for that matter). As Tim Chester, author of the book, Truth We Can Touch , points out, You can read you...

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The Origin of the Term “Gaslighting”

Author

Chuck DeGroat

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In His book When Narcissism Comes to Church, Chuck DeGroat describes a common tool employed on social media, gaslighting: Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that draws its name from a 1938 Bri...

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On Winning? Considering Kevin Durant and Anthony Bourdain

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Albert Camus Two events recently collided in my mind and coalesced into this short essay: The first was a relatively in...

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Parkinson’s Law

Author

C. Northcote Parkinson

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Scripture

Ephesians 5:16, Colossians 3:23, Ecclesiastes 6:7, Psalm 90:12, James 4:14

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...

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The B.C.

Author

Source Unknown

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Humor

This story deals with a rather old-fashioned lady, who was planning a couple of weeks vacation in Florida. She also was quite delicate and elegant with her language. She wrote a letter to a particular...

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Author

G. K. Chesterton

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Scripture

2 Corinthians 12:9, Isaiah 40:31, Romans 8:28, John 14:27, Psalm 23:4

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was mean...

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Risen Lord, Loving Father ... and

Risen Lord, Loving Father ... and Ever-Present Spirit: Thank You for reaching into our doubts, giving us the faith we lack. Thank You for Your gracious condescension reaching from the glories of heave...

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Holy God–Father, Son and Spirit: We

Holy God–Father, Son and Spirit: We come with our agendas in order to enlist you in our causes but You won’t be co-opted for our small visions. Instead, You hold out a greater vision and purpose and i...

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Spare: Privilege and Pain

Author

Colleen Strachan

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What do the royals and a Rorschach test have in common? Both provoke reactions that tell us more about the attitudes and beliefs of the beholder than about the object of their gaze. This is not to say...

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The Church Losing its Place as the Center of Attention

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Tim Wu

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The Church was the one institution whose mission depended on galvanizing attention; and through its daily and weekly offices, as well as its sometimes-central role in education, that is exactly what i...

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