Evangelical Christians often tend to be followers of cultural trends rather than shapers of them. This charge has been leveled frequently against believers with conservative political views but our friends on the evangelical left are not immune to this phenomenon. An excellent example is the headlong rush of many evangelicals to embrace “creation care” which turns out to be the secular environmentalist agenda dressed up in religious garb.
Economic Woes and My Texifornian Roots
Some snippet that I caught on the news recently got me thinking about red states and blue states – the states that tend to vote for Republicans and Democrats respectively. Somewhere in my aging brain cells, I remember learning that one of the arguments for strong state governments with a weak federal system is that the states provide laboratories for public policy. Well the lab results are in and they show that red states are doing better economically than blue states. So why are we about to adopt all the policies of the blue states at the federal level?
Atonement – Part 3
Part 3 in an exploration of different views of the atonement.
Atonement – Part 2
Part 2 in an exploration of different views of the atonement.
Atonement – Part 1
Part 1 in an exploration of different views of the atonement.
Michael Crichton Died Recently!
I’m probably the only one on the planet who missed the news that Michael Crichton died on November 8th of this year. He died of throat cancer at age 66. I hadn’t heard about his death until about a week ago. Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and a voice of reason against global warming nonsense.
Consistently Pro-Life … A Good Friend’s Thoughts
My good friend Marty Martin wrote me an in-depth response to my posting about Ron Sider and the issue of whether evangelical Christians are consistently pro-life. Marty’s musings were long enough that it seemed beyond what he could reasonably post as a comment so he sent it to me via email so I’ve posted it here.
Obama – the Centrist? (Part 1)
I caught a snippet of an Obama commercial late in the election cycle. He said something to the effect that his election would initiate “fundamental change” in America. I remember thinking that Obama had finally said something with which I agreed. Will it be change for the better?
Getting Reacquainted with Ron Sider
I’m reading a recent book by Ron Sider which is entitled The Scandal of Evangelical Politics: Why Are Christians Missing the Chance to Really Change the World? He thinks that believers should oppose smoking as strongly as they oppose abortion. Can he really be this confused? Is there really a similarity between an act chosen by an adult that may shorten that adult’s own life and an act chosen by an adult that ends the life of a child immediately and violently?
Cruise Blog #2
The best T-shirt with a message that we’ve seen so far on the cruise: Procrastinators of the world … Unite! Most perplexing thing heard so far: “The life rafts are unsinkable.” Why don’t they just make the whole ship in the same way that the life rafts are made so that we would not even need life rafts?