Isaiah 53:3–5, Daniel 3:16–18, Micah 6:6–8, Matthew 23:23–24, Luke 4:16–30, Psalm 2:1
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...
Matthew 7:7-8, Proverbs 27:17, Luke 15:4-7, Luke 19:10
The second lesson this group of new believers has shown us is that the postmodern path to faith is organic. Lostness, of course, looks different depending upon your perspective and personality. It is ...
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...
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...
The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that ...
Mark 9:24, Romans 10:17, John 20:27, 1 John 4:1, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Proverbs 3:5-6
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”. ...
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.
Romans 16:17-18, 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, Titus 3:9-11, Mark 3:24-26
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...
Isaiah 1:11–17, Jeremiah 7:1–11 , Amos 5:21–24, Luke 4:16–30 , John 1:1–14 , Psalm 50:16–23
The Enlightenment was, among many other things, a protest against a system that, since it was itself based on a protest [the Reformation], could not see that it was itself in need of further reform. (...
Most Christians can deal with inevitable doubts as long as there is room for doubt. But when a system is enforced that leaves no room for doubt, benign uncertainties can mutate into faith-destroying m...
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...
Nietzsche belongs to a trinity of nineteenth-century thinkers that Paul Ricoeur called the “masters of suspicion.” These masters of suspicion—Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud—were all...
Today’s atheism becomes then the willful refusal to mature in the dark purgatory of a debris-covered heart for the sake of the God who is always greater than the God who was perceived and loved the pr...
A few years ago, a pastor of an evangelical-fundamentalist church with whom I’m acquainted announced on the Sunday after Easter that he had become an atheist. He told his stunned congregation that he ...
Where do you turn for marriage advice when you aren’t religious? This is becoming an ever-increasing question as western cultures become more and more secular. One option is to turn to the London-base...
“If there is no God, never was a God, why do we miss him so much?” asked one agnostic European Jew as he looked back on the horrors of the twentieth century.
Jeremiah 29:13, Proverbs 3:5-6, Romans 8:24-25, Hebrews 11:1, John 20:27
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...
In an article entitled, What the New Atheists Don’t See , the British author Theodore Dalrymple shares his honest struggles with atheism. The subtitle of his article is fascinating, “To regret re...
Sometimes it is helpful to see what life looks like on the other side of faith, that is, for those who believe that God does not exist. Bertrand Russell, the renowned philosopher and avowed atheist, h...
During the second world war, [the British statesman] Sir John Laurence attended what he describes as “a sort of Communist memorial service” to " Stanislavsky (the seminal Soviet Theatre pr...
In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...
Galatians 5:6, John 20:27, Mark 9:24, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Romans 8:24-25, James 1:5-6
In this excerpt from his book Faith in the Shadows, pastor and author Austin Fischer shares a surprising truth about the need to be vulnerable with our own faith if we are likely to have a positive im...
Mark 16:15-16, Philippians 1:6, Acts 16:31, John 1:12-13, Ephesians 2:8-9, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 1:16
[In the middle of the twentieth century a] young Russian communist went to a meeting one night where he heard a Christian expounding his faith. The communist was angry. How could anyone still believe ...
Objections to theism come and go. … But every philosopher I know believes that the most serious challenge to theism was, is, and will continue to be the problem of evil.
In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...