As longtime readers of this blog know, sometimes I just feel the need to rant a little. Today is one of those days. I want to rant about Christians and the church, or more precisely… the commitment of Christians to the church. This is the gist of my rant. But this time, my rant will be in the form of parables. So here are three parables about the Kingdom of Me. Continue reading
One of the most common buzz words going around today in the fields of health, medicine and psychology is mindfulness. You hear it popping up in discussions on wellness, nutrition, education, business, sports, etc. Seminars, classes and conferences are being offered at universities, medical centers, and professional organizations around the world. For example, in May of 2004 the National Institutes of Health held a daylong symposium called “Mindfulness Meditation and Health.” The original mindfulness program developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center is now used by over 700 hospitals worldwide.[1] It is obviously something that is very popular. Continue reading
I have been reading a book lately about the history of Christian doctrine. In this work, the author comments on the differences between the Gospel of John and the other three Gospel writers. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are often called the Synoptic Gospels. The world “synoptic” basically means “seeing together.” You may have noticed that these three Gospels present a great deal of similar material in a roughly parallel format. So these Gospel writers often share the same material but with their individual perspectives and approaches. The Gospel of John, however, is dramatically different from the Synoptics.
One of the chief differences is that John’s Gospel is very explicit in presenting Christ as divine. The deity of our Lord is most clear in John. The author of the book I am reading emphasizes this. Yet, he goes beyond this, and states that it is only in John that we see Christ’s deity. According to him, the Synoptics present Jesus as merely a man, Messiah perhaps, but certainly not divine. Continue reading
Theistic evolution is a classic example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. If you are not familiar with the theory, it is basically this: God is the Creator of all things, but evolution is the means He used to bring about all organic life on earth. So, according to this theory, the earth is billions of years old. Life began spontaneously in some primordial oceanic goo millions of years ago. The generally accepted secular geological time table is correct. And human beings are evolved primates, descended from some ape-like ancestor of a few million years ago. Continue reading
This morning I have been reading the latest issue of National Geographic (July 2015). In one of the small half-page features that NG has near the beginning of the magazine there is found the tale of the quagga mussel. Quagga mussels are a species native to the Ukraine. They have apparently been hitching rides as stowaways in the ballasts of ocean-going ships and have made their way to the U.S. Now this invasive species is overrunning the Great Lakes. The quagga mussels are eating up native algae and changing the entire ecosystem of the Lakes. You know what I say? So what? Continue reading
TRUTH BUILDERS MINISTRIES 