Tried With Fire

A friend on Facebook shared the trailer for a new movie, The Farewell. The premise of the story immediately grabbed me. The matriarch of a Chinese family has been diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Her family decide not to tell her the bad news, so they engineer her grandson's wedding as a way to get everyone together one last time. A goodbye without saying goodbye. This idea is very foreign from a Western perspective, and the main character, a Chinese American woman, wrestles with family, love, and loss when cultures conflict. I can't wait to see the movie even it means bawling in the movie theater. But this movie also brings out the differences between East and West. "You think one's life belongs to oneself. But that's the difference between the East and the West. In the East, a person's life is part of a whole. Family." There are plenty of stereotypes, but research has shown that the West is independent. The East is interdependent. The West see...

ht: Deb W.

I miss the Far Side. Click on the pic for a larger view From With Good Reason , 4th Edition, S. Morris Engel, St. Martin's Press, 1990, pg. 118.

I had never heard of a beer flight or wine flight until I read Aimee Byrd's post . Apparently it is a way to sample different beverages by beginning with one that is easier on the palate and then moving on to something a bit more challenging glass by glass. Aimee's friend then suggested - Why don't we this with books? Give readers a starting point for a topic and then recommendations for further reading if they want to learn more. This sounded like a great idea to me, so I went through my shelves and compiled a book flight for logic and philosophy. Logic and philosophy??? In the past, I prided myself on avoiding philosophy like the plague in college. I had a friend in grad school with a PhD in philosophy who was now seeing the light and pursuing something practical like computer science. I did not have a high view of this subject. It was the stuff of academic ivory towers with no meaningful application whatsoever. But I was wrong. There came a point when my Christian...

I am continuing to read The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind in bits and pieces when I get the chance. Every time I pick it up my assumptions are challenged. According to Mark Noll, the Enlightenment had a huge impact upon our country but not just in the secular sphere. American Christianity embraced it as well, which leads me to ask: - Is our propensity toward biblicism less biblical and more a product of the Enlightenment?  - Does biblicism afflict the American culture more than other countries because of our history? - Is our study of the Bible also influenced by this? Are we taking Enlightenment principles of studying the material world and applying it to the Word of God? Is this good or bad? What are the implications? This may not seem practical, but I want to know why I think the way I do and where it came from. Am I child of the Enlightenment (I think the answer is "yes") and to what degree? Just because I am a Christian does not automatically mean that my ...

Philosophy has its uses...

Whether we like it or not and whether we realize it or not, we are the children of the philosophers who have gone before us. Our thinking is never done in a vacuum, but if you believe otherwise, read on. For Bacon, standing at the dawn of the scientific revolution, the main enemy had been Aristotelian philosophy. Thus he taught that science must start by clearing the decks - by liberating the mind from all metaphysical speculation, all received notions of truth, all the accumulated superstition of the ages... Applied to biblical interpretation, the Baconian method stipulated that the first step is to free our minds from all historical theological formulations (Calvinist, Lutheran, Anglican or whatever). With minds washed clean from merely human speculations, we confront the biblical text as a collection of facts that speak for themselves - and then compile individual verses inductively into a theological system... Perhaps most serious, however, was the Baconian hostility to h...

I'm going to jump on the 2015 book list bandwagon. The books are listed in the order they were read/listened: C.H. Spurgeon's Autobiography: The Early Years  (audiobook read by Robert Whitfield) - Spurgeon is my favorite dead theologian, and I loved hearing about his conversion and struggles to come to faith. My favorite line is "My mother said to me, one day, “Ah, Charles! I often prayed the Lord to make you a Christian, but I never asked that you might become a Baptist.” I could not resist the temptation to reply, “Ah, mother ! the Lord has answered your prayer with His usual bounty, and given you exceeding abundantly above what you asked or thought.”" The Democratization of American Christianity  by Nathan O. Hatch - A very interesting look at how the mindset of American Christianity was shaped by our culture. The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology  by Pascal Denault - I am indebted to R.C. Sproul for opening up the beauty of Covenant Theology to...

"Exercising care over the formation of our minds is not a purely academic pursuit; it is also a spiritual one. God enjoins us in Scripture to pursue intellectual virtues. The Bible is unequivocally clear that Christians are to superintend the life of the mind. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by he renewing of your minds" (Rom. 12:3). God cares about how you think, not just what you think. A godly mind is not merely one devoid of vile thoughts, nor are the faithful stewards of the mind necessarily the ones who die with all their doctrinal p's and q's in place (brainwashing might as effectively accomplish this)..." "According to the Christian tradition, to forge virtuous habits of moral and intellectual character is part of what is required for us to grow to the full stature of all that God intends for humans to be. Becoming virtuous is part of what makes us fit residents of the kingdom of heaven, ready and able to do God's ...

If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any... So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only t...

Philosophy for Christians? You bet! I'm sharing a few mini-reviews at Out of the Ordinary of books/resources that can help Christians think and convey ideas more clearly. Read the post here .

In the process of obtaining one's chosen label for one's view, there is also frequently an attempt to characterize one's opponent's view in an unfavorable light…  It is especially important to be alert to the attempt to build evaluation into a term by the connotations given. For example, the same situation may be described as "rich diversity" or as a "confused hodgepodge." There is a familiar conjugation of an irregular verb: "I have firm convictions; you are stubborn; he is a pigheaded fool." Similarly in politics one may characterize one's own approach as flexible and open-minded, while one's opponent, whose behavior in this respect is the same, is termed a "flip-flopper." Such use of slanted definitions to gain an advantage is disappointing, and to an objective and analytical observer is a sign of weakness, like the proverbial comment in the margin of the preacher's sermon notes: "Weak point. Shout loudly....

Many people do not like arguing. They picture an angry dispute between two individuals… It is usually characterized by negative emotions: we are upset, raise our voices, and maybe even stomp out of the room in frustration… Usually, if we are honest, the goal of this kind of arguments is to win… Another type of arguing features a dispute not between competing individuals but between competing ideas… Rather than emotional; it is rational. We are seeking reasons for why we think a belief is true. In arguing this way, we do not attack the other person, but we are both attacking an issue or problem. This is why philosophers often can hold opposite views on issues and yet be good friends. The goal of this kind of arguing is not to win but to find the truth. In fact, if you can show me that a belief I had thought was true is actually false, I have not lost but have won, because, I do not want to hold a false belief and am now closer to the truth. 1 It's easy to become proud when on...

Without "absolutes" revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice, and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers. We could never know who God is, how He is to be worshipped, or wherein true happiness lies. If virtue is sought above harm as a road to temporal happiness, the striving and the progress starts and ends in self - but selfishness is itself a vice! No attitude of mind which does not acknowledge dependence upon Almighty God and seek to glorify Him has any element of good or virtue in it. If the mind of a student is ensnared by these theories and speculations, he will find it a sore task ever to be free of them. Indeed, it is a dolorous task, and something beyond the potential of the slothful or careless, to root out mercilessly ideas and dogmas with which the intellect has long been nurtured. With the world, indwelling sin, and early education all arguing the same way, i...

Last week, I had the opportunity to hear Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr. speak on apologetics to the Christopher Newport University InterVarsity Fellowship. Here is a summary of the talk. (This is to best of my note deciphering and recall.) Since the garden of Eden, there has been a war between Satan and God. The devil's attack began through his own rebellion and subsequent enlistment of the human race into his army. He deceived Adam and Eve into doubting God and His Word, an outright rejection of His rightful authority. But God made a declaration of war right back - the proto gospel where the seed of the serpent would bruise the heel of the seed of the woman, but He, in turn, would crush his head. Since that time, God has rescued men and women from Satan's army into His own, to fight in the battle until Jesus returns. But there is a war going on in the hearts of each side. On God's side, our new nature is at war with the old. On the devil's side, it is a war between the falle...

I was reading ahead in our literature curriculum. The second lesson deals with analyzing the worldview of different writers. The text lists key philosophers from ancient Greece to the 20th century. As I was reading through the list, several names sounded familiar to me although I had never studied philosophy. Then I remembered...