Heart Problems and a Syllogism

In today’s relativistic culture, people do not like us declaring that the only way to be saved is through Jesus Christ. Neither do they like God declaring Himself to be the only God. They like to portray Him as being self-serving and greedy because He wants to be the only one to get our praise and service.

I believe that these people have chosen in their hearts that they do not want to worship God and therefore use this as an excuse to make Him look bad so they can reject Him. These people are rarely helped by logical arguments because hearts are rarely or never changed by logic. Nonetheless, I want to propose a logical syllogism.

If the President of the United States declares himself the only President of the United States, we do not question him or say that he is being greedy. He is simply making a true statement about who he is.

I think it is only fair that we allow God to declare Himself. When He does He is simply making a true statement about who He is.

Therefore, if God is God, by definition He has the right to declare exclusivity in His description.

If We Evolved, Why ….?

If we evolved and there is no God, why do we continually search for a god to worship? Why do we have sentiments for the past? Why do we love anyone but ourselves? If we evolved and there is no God, why do we enjoy and create “worthless” beauty? Why do we have this incredible desire and ability to screw up? Why do we look for divine help and comfort in times of trouble? Why do we seem not to be able to shake the reality of the nonphysical and the miraculous? If we evolved and there is no God, why do we bother to exist?

A Relativist’s Blessing

May things go for you as you wish,

Unless you don’t want them to

In which case I hope that they don’t.

Unless, of course you don’t want me to,

Then I most certainly won’t.

Stretching

God really did know what He was doing when He had the Scripture writers talk about the value of being stretched. Being stretched or tested or tried or whatever you wish to call it does accomplish good things very often. It is a curious thing that happens in the Kingdom of God, evil is used to make good come about. James 1:3 says, “Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.” and Matthew 5 tells us to rejoice under persecution because great is our reward in heaven. We have no need to be down about persecution, because it will build our strength and because we are headed for a great reward. (I do not hold to the view that each time we are persecuted we get another jewel in our crown. Instead I believe this verse is saying that we should be glad under persecution because the greatness of our future reward far outweighs difficulty of the persecution here.)

I discovered that a fellow worker is a philosophy major and that he is a pragmatist and a follower of William James. I opened discussion with him about Truth, reality, God, Jesus, and whether or not we can know. He holds to absolute truth, but says that because we are not all knowing we cannot say that anyone else is wrong and that we are only right. We can only know from our experience. He agrees with Lewis’s three options about Jesus, that He was either a liar, a lunatic, or the Son of God; but says that because he was not there with Christ, he cannot be certain that Jesus was not one of the first two.

This throws me into a whirl of thinking and I am now enthused to throw myself into studying philosophy and the Scripture to find out how to answer this ‘every man’. This trying of my faith has caused me to realize more my need of God, His Spirit, and a continual diet of the Scripture. It has given me impetus to study difficult things and to reconsider my presuppositions. The testing and ‘persecution’ of the believer is very beneficial. God did know what He was doing when He inspired those words. We have a wonderful reward in the future and we need a little stretching to keep us strong until ‘That Day’ comes.