Faith and Work on Anti Intellectualism

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A Mischief to Religion

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Anti-Intellectualism has been a problem in the church for some time now. Consider the words of the 17th century English clergyman Joseph Glanvill, who had this to say about the role of reason in faith...

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Heart & Head?

Author

Nancy Pearcey

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Scripture

Proverbs 2:2–6, Romans 12:1–2, Isaiah 1:18, Daniel 1:17–20, Matthew 22:37, Psalm 119:97–100

At a Christian high school, a theology teacher strode to the front of the classroom, where he drew a heart on one side of the blackboard and a brain on the other. The two are as divided as the two sid...

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Seeking a Better Way

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Genesis 11:1-9 , Isaiah 58:6-12, Jeremiah 29:4-7, Matthew 5:14-16, Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 133:

In the land whose founding metaphor was the mutuality of John Winthrop’s seventeenth-century vision of a “city set on a hill,” we live more and more in estranged, hostile, exclusive enclaves, linked o...

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When Ideas have Consequences

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Genesis 4:1-16 , Exodus 32:1-35 , 1 Kings 12:1-20 , Matthew 7:24-27, Psalm 1:1-6, Romans 1:18-32

In 1889, the French novelist Paul Bourget penned The Disciple , where he depicted the life of a renowned philosopher and psychologist, whose existence was marked by a seemingly monotonous routine...

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G. K. Chesterton: The Great Defender of Tradition

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Exodus 20:1-17, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Matthew 15:3, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, Psalm 119:97-98

G. K. Chesterton was well-known (and iconoclastic) in his defense of tradition in a time when progress was all the rage in Western Europe- in technology, in the sciences, in philosophy. Chesterton, on...

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Author

Bill Bishop

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Like-minded, homogeneous groups squelch dissent, grow more extreme in their thinking, and ignore evidence that their positions are wrong. As a result, we now live in a giant feedback loop, hearing our...

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The Tragedy of the Digital World

Author

Ruth Haley Barton

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Scripture

Exodus 24:15–18, 1 Kings 19:9–12, Isaiah 30:15, Mark 1:35, Luke 5:15–16, Psalm 2:1–2

Recently a professor shared with me a college student’s reflections in response to my earlier writings on solitude and silence: I was not born into a world relatively unaffected by technology lik...

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Author

H.H. Farmer

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Scripture

Genesis 4:1-16 , Jonah 1:3, Proverbs 1:20-33, Acts 9:1-19, Romans 1:18-32, Psalm 1:1-6

If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.

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The Gift of College Students

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

1 Samuel 3:1-10, Ecclesiastes 12:1 , Proverbs 2:1-11, Mark 10:17-22 , 1 Timothy 4:12 , Psalm 119:9-11

I have been moved to a different course of action, however, inspired largely by my daily exposure to college students in a great university during the course of a preaching and teaching ministry that ...

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Thanking God for Ignorance

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Proverbs 4:7, Hosea 4:6, James 1:5 , Colossians 2:2-3, Psalm 119:66

Melville Weston Fuller (1833–1910), a prominent U.S. lawyer and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1888–1910), once presided over a church conference where a speaker passionately denounced higher edu...

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The Truth They Were Hiding

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Ecclesiastes 3:11, Exodus 33:18–23, Isaiah 55:6–9 , John 1:1–14 , Acts 17:22–31, Psalm 42:1–2

Many have heard of the polymath and famous atheist Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), whose career as a public intellectual touched on a variety of disciplines, including philosophy (he is considered one o...

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Author

Andrew Sullivan

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Modernity slowly weakened spirituality, by design and accident, in favor of commerce; it downplayed silence and mere being in favor of noise and constant action. The reason we live in a culture increa...

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Are People in the West Abandoning Faith or Just the Church?

Author

David Zahl

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Scripture

Exodus 32:1-4 , 1 Kings 18:21, Jeremiah 2:13, Romans 1:25, Psalm 115:4-8, Acts 17:22-23

In this excerpt, author David Zahl challenges the common belief that religion is “in decline.” He argues that while Westerners, particularly younger generations, may be distancing themselves from the ...

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Author

Oscar Wilde

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Scripture

Ecclesiastes 5:10-12 , 2 Kings 5:15-27, Isaiah 55:1-2, Matthew 16:26, Luke 12:16-21 , Psalm 49:6-8

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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The Sacred Alters of Modern Life

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A. J. Swoboda

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Our 24/7 culture conveniently provides every good and service we want, when we want, how we want. Our time – saving devices, technological conveniences, and cheap mobility have seemingly made life muc...

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Is Christian Faith Antithetical to Reason?

Author

Richard Robinson

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In his book The Allure of Gentleness , Dallas Willard includes a thought-provoking excerpt from Richard Robinson, a prominent atheist thinker from the mid-20th century. In his work An Atheist’...

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It's My Life!

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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In Redeeming Productivity , Reagan Rose tells his own story to illustrate the two ways in which the idea that “it’s my life” leads to two very different and disordered outlooks on productivity. When ...

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Author

Os Guinness

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The blunt fact is that America's grand promotion of debt-leveraged consumerism has stood Max Weber's famous thesis about the rise of capitalism on its head. It has scorned the early-American s...

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Eliot's Vision for Harvard Athletics

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 12:22, Micah 6:8 , Ephesians 4:25 , Philippians 4:8, Psalm 15:1-2

Charles William Eliot (1834–1926), was an educator and long-time president of Harvard College(1869–1909). During his many years at Harvard, Charles W. Eliot frequently expressed reservations about spo...

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Author

Addison D. Bevere

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We were created for goodness and perfection. That’s why we innovate, progress, and change. But if our progress loses its purpose, it cannibalizes our humanity, leaving us distracted and disoriented.

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Author

Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer

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Scripture

Exodus 32:1-35 , 1 Samuel 25:2-35, Proverbs 18:2, Mark 3:1-6, James 1:19-20, Psalm 119:66

First, we do not believe that strong convictions cause incivility. Instead, we believe poorly formed convictions cause incivility.

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What is Faith? Is it a Way of Knowing?

Author

Travis Dickinson

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Scripture

Genesis 15:1-6, Exodus 14:10-14, Joshua 1:9, Psalm 23:, James 2:14-26

There’s no shortage of the religiously faithless who seem eager to tell us what faith is. Many of these characterizations of faith are reminiscent of Mark Twain’s precocious schoolboy who quipped, “Fa...

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Business: A Dog-Eat-Dog World?

Author

John C. Knap

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 22:1, Luke 16:10, Philippians 2:4, Romans 12:10, Psalm 15:2

In his book A Better Way to Think about Business, the late business philosopher Robert Solomon, a student of business jargon, speaks of having been struck by the imagery that peppers many [business] p...

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Author

Marc Maron

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Scripture

Job 3:11-13, Isaiah 45:7, Habakkuk 1:2-3 , Matthew 27:45-46 , Luke 22:42-44, Psalm 73:16-17

I’m a paranoid agnostic. I don’t think God exists, but I’m sure there is some sort of force out there working against me.

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“Respecting” Religion by Making it Private

Author

Nancy Pearcey

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 5:1–2, 1 Kings 18:21–39, Daniel 3:16–18, Matthew 5:14–16, Acts 4:19–20, Psalm 2:1–2, 10–12

Most secularists are too politically savvy to attack religion directly or to debunk it as false. So what do they do? They consign religion to the value sphere—which takes it out of the realm of true a...

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Author

Edward Glaeser

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Our cities’ gleaming spires point to the greatness that mankind can achieve, but also to our hubris.... Urban innovation can destroy value as well as create it.

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Ideas Have Consequences & Doomsday Prepping

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Let’s talk about how our beliefs shape our actions, especially when fear is involved. You've probably heard the phrase, "ideas have consequences," right? It's easy to see this in act...

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Author

Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone

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Whether we are easily swamped or nearly waterproof, there’s one wiring challenge we all face: Bad is stronger than good. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt elaborates: “Responses to threats and unpleasantnes...

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Author

Kevin DeYoung

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The biggest deception of our digital age may be the lie that says we can be omni-competent, omni-informed, and omni-present. . . . We must choose our absence, our inability, and our ignorance—and choo...

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Hard Work is Missing and Its Social Decay

Author

Timothy Keller

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In Hillbilly Elegy the author tells of Bob, who worked with him at a tile warehouse with his girlfriend. Bob missed work once a week, was chronically late, and took many breaks each day, lasting ove...

faith and work on Anti-Intellectualism

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