I am not a Roman Catholic but I like Benedict XVI's comment as follows:
Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of education is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognising nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own ego.[69] He said that "a dictatorship of relativism"[70] was the core challenge facing the church and humanity. At the root of this problem, he said, is Kant's "self-limitation of reason". This, he said, is contradictory to the modern acclamation of science whose excellence is based on the power of reason to know the truth. He said that this self-amputation of reason leads to pathologies … [71] Benedict traced the failed revolutions and violent ideologies of the 20th century to a conversion of partial points of view into absolute guides. He said "Absolutizing what is not absolute but relative is called totalitarianism."[72] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI
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By Franklin Graham
21st October 2015 Why is there so much hatred for Christians? Why are followers of Christ who seek to serve the poor, care for the sick, feed the hungry, and emulate the Savior so denigrated and disparaged around the world? Ultimately, it is because men hate the Name of Jesus Christ. They love darkness rather than light. They love their sin rather than the only One who can forgive their sin. They refuse to let go of their pride and self-sufficiency and admit there is only one way for sinful men to be reconciled to a holy God. Jesus Himself said that “if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you … A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:18, 20). Jesus demands that we come to Him on His non-negotiable terms. He tells us that we are vile sinners in need of a Savior. To receive the gift of salvation, we must strip ourselves of any claim to merit before God, and come to Jesus in genuine repentance and faith. Only then can the bad news of our sinful state be washed away in the Good News of forgiveness and everlasting life. Source “The truth is that the modern world has committed itself to two totally different and inconsistent conceptions about education. It is always trying to expand the scope of education; and always trying to exclude from it all religion and philosophy. But this is sheer nonsense. You can have an education that teaches atheism because atheism is true, and it can be, from its own point of view, a complete education. But you cannot have an education claiming to teach all truth, and then refusing to discuss whether atheism is true.” (G.K. Chesterton, The Common Man)
By Eric Metaxsas You know Darwinism has problems, but how do you explain them to your friends and family? Well, look no further than a bicycle lock. What’s the greatest discovery in the history of biology? If you said “seedless watermelons,” you’re close. Actually, it’s probably the discovery of DNA. It’s hard to imagine in this age of genetic engineering, but scientists in Darwin’s time saw life as quite simple. Cells were thought to be blobs of primitive chemicals called “protoplasm.” But as technology advanced and scientists were able to peer inside the cell, they discovered something amazing: Every living thing actually contains intricate, microscopic machines, performing functions without which life would not be possible. The real breakthrough, came in 1953 when Watson and Crick uncovered the structure and function of DNA—the molecule that programs and regulates cells. It revolutionized our understanding of life. And it stretched Darwin’s theory to the breaking point. DNA is essentially a form of incredibly efficient digital code, uniquely suited for storing the blueprints of living things. And for something microscopic, it’s huge. The human genome contains over a gigabyte of data! Of course, like digital code on a hard drive, DNA can be corrupted. The most recent iteration of Darwin’s theory claims that these corruptions—called mutations—are the engines of evolution. But here’s the problem: We don’t have a single example of a mutation resulting in a net gain of information. Not one. As intelligent design theorists have pointed out, unguided, natural processes always degrade information—they never increase it. If life at its most fundamental level is a digital code, then mutations are glitches that, if they accumulate, will eventually kill the organism. Information is at the heart of life, and our uniform and repeated experience tells us that matter, by itself, never produces information. The only known source capable of producing information is a mind. Okay, fine, you say, but how do I explain this over the dinner table? One great place to start is a new video from the Discovery Institute that condenses the main argument for intelligent design to a snappy 20 minutes. It’s called “The Information Enigma,” and features noted ID authors Dr. Stephen Meyer and Dr. Douglas Axe. Here are the basics: Using an analogy from Dr. Meyers’ book, “Darwin’s Doubt,” the video compares DNA with a bicycle lock. “The reason a bike lock works,” explains Meyer, “is that there are vastly more ways of arranging those numeric characters that will keep the lock closed than there are that will open the lock.” Most bicycle locks have four dials with ten digits. So for a thief to steal the bike, he would have to guess correctly from among 10,000 possible combinations. No easy task. But what about DNA? Well, in experiments Axe conducted at Cambridge, he found that for a DNA sequence generating a short protein just 150 amino acids in length, for every 1 workable arrangement of amino acids, there are 10 to the 77th possible unworkable amino acid arrangements. Using the bicycle lock analogy, that’s a lock with 77 dials containing 10 digits. Thus, as the film states, it is overwhelmingly unlikely that a random mutational search would produce even one new functional protein in the entire history of life on earth. In other words, random mutation is not driving the biological bicycle. It’s a powerful argument, and one I’d love you to understand and use. Available in the BreakPoint online bookstore Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design Stephen C. Meyer | HarperOne | 2015 Breakpoint.org Above is the video from the Discovery Institute Share it with your friends, and start some intelligent conversations about intelligent design.
The Information Enigma Center for Science and Culture | The Discovery Institute | October 2015 In a letter to Pope Francis, 13 Catholic Cardinals have stepped forward in the spirit of Martin Luther and warned Catholics and Protestants alike of what happens when they choose man instead of God, when they choose modern man-centered culture instead of God's unchanging word, the Bible.
They wrote: "The collapse of liberal Protestant churches in the modern era, accelerated by their abandonment of key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation, warrants great caution in our own synodal discussions." (1) What is needed in our modern society is not more caving-in to the selfish adult spoilt brat bullies holding our society to ransom (and bulldozing everything good in their path), all in the name of the rampant, man-exalting, secular humanist religion, but a return to God's ways, to the Bible. Just as Martin Luther spoke up in 1517 and started what became known as the Protestant Reformation, so we need to be continually reforming today, back toward God's revealed truth. Reformation means to come back to the Bible, to what God has revealed to man, and to turn away from the corruptions and distortions we have been led astray to. We need God's truth rather than what man would like God's truth to be. The collapsed Protestant churches these 13 Cardinals speak of, have collapsed because they have strayed off course. They teach man's foolishness rather than God's wisdom. They have exalted men, in the form of charismatic priests, modern scientists and critical scholars, rather than God. In so doing they are no longer Christian churches, and can therefore offer their listeners no hope. A Christian church surely is one which teaches and trusts the teachings of Jesus as handed down by the Apostles (which includes the Old Testament as Jesus made clear), which gathers to worship God as He has revealed Himself in the Bible (not the one made by men in their own image), to have fellowship, communion and to pray (Acts 2:42). Bravo to these Cardinals for their call (maybe not as in-depth as is needed) for a new Reformation, it is exactly what is needed. (1) http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351154?eng=y&refresh_ce By Franklin Graham. There is no doubt our great nation is at a crossroads, and the Church of Jesus Christ needs to take a stand. This is why in 2016, I’m traveling to all 50 states to hold prayer rallies, calling our nation to God. We’re calling it the Decision America Tour, and we’re challenging Christians to pray for America, practice biblical principles at home and in public, and be sure to vote in the upcoming elections. I’m not looking to government or politicians to solve our nation’s problems. I don’t have any faith in the Republican Party, nor do I have any faith in the Democratic Party. But I am looking to the churches, to people who call themselves followers of Christ, to repent of their sins and call upon Almighty God. But before the Church can take a stand, we as the church need to humble ourselves and turn from our sin. We have forgotten God’s standards and His ways. If the Church of Jesus Christ would take a stand, then I believe we would have renewed hope for America. Prayer Dear Lord, please show me the sin in my life so that I may repent and live wholeheartedly for You, and please use me to stand for Your truth in a nation and world that so desperately need the Gospel. In Jesus’ Name. Amen. Source Fear and Loathing Stalk the West.
October 7, 2015 by Samuel Gregg Civilizations come and civilizations go. While some prove capable of inner renewal, there’s no guarantee that any given culture will maintain itself over long periods of time. Today we continue to admire the achievements of Greece and Rome. As distinct living cultures, however, they’ve been dead for centuries. Many of us think of civilizational failure in terms of a society’s inability to withstand sudden external encounters. The sun-worshiping human-sacrificing slave-owning Aztec world, for instance, quickly crumbled before Hernán Cortés, a handful of Spanish conquistadors, and his native allies, and, perhaps above all, European-borne diseases. Given enough violence, superior technology, and the will to use it, an entire culture can be seriously destabilized, if not swept aside. Yet ever since Edward Gibbon’s multi-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it’s been impossible to downplay the role of internal vicissitudes in facilitating civilizational degeneration. More than one person, I suspect, has been wondering lately about this issue of civilizational decline with regard to the West. Whether it’s Planned Parenthood’s diabolical activities, America’s de facto capitulation to Iran, Western governments’ failure to eradicate the cancer that is ISIS, or the same governments’ general unwillingness to overhaul their dysfunctional welfare systems, it’s harder and harder to deny that something deeper is seriously awry. We often conceptualize such subterranean shifts as institutional problems. The visible deterioration of rule of law in America and Western Europe is one such example. But while these matter, it’s arguable that more primordial forces are at work. In the West’s case, the first may be summed up in one word: fear. The fear presently haunting the West manifests itself in many forms. Numerous opinion-polls underscore, for instance, that Americans are worried that their children won’t enjoy the same living-standards that they have. Many Europeans are apprehensive about the Muslim minorities that live in their midst, and angst about some such Muslims’ embrace of jihadist ways. Fear makes people do strange things. It persuades some to applaud the populist offerings of a Donald Trump. Others engage in denial by repeating, mantra-like, that all cultures are equally valuable and there’s nothing to worry about. But if there’s anything redeemable about the societies created by Marxism, National Socialism, Maoism, or Islamic jihadism, it’s not obvious to me. Yet others respond to the prevailing unease by insisting that the appropriate response is more-of-the-same. This was on full-display in a recent address by the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. After conceding the EU’s ineptness in the face of serious external and internal challenges, Juncker insisted that the solution was “more Europe” (code for more top-down direction by Europe’s largely-unaccountable political class and even less accountable bureaucracies) and “solidarity” (which, practically-speaking, amounts to the same thing in most European politicians’ minds). And, yes, fear often causes people to identify particular groups as somehow responsible for everyone else’s problems. The renascent anti-Semitism that increasingly pollutes many European societies is perhaps the most visible instance of this. As Walter Russell Mead recently observed, “Countries where Jews are uncomfortable are places where a lot of other things are going seriously wrong.” Closely associated with fear’s role in the West’s internal corrosion is the problem of self-loathing. It’s hardly a secret that many professors in contemporary Western universities have been inculcating students in rather negative views of Western culture for several generations. Prominent examples include the casual dismissal of America’s Founders as white-male-slave-owners, and the insistence that profound institutional successes such as constitutionalism are “bourgeois-constructs” that merely legitimize systematic injustices. Then there are the efforts to “de-Westernize” educational curricula. One recent (failed) attempt was that of France’s Socialist Education Minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, to discourage high-school students from learning Latin, ancient Greek, or German, while simultaneously forcing them to study Islamic history. Every society needs to be self-critical if it is to confess to serious evils and avoid repeating mistakes. For the West, slavery (hardly an exclusively Western phenomenon) is a clear example. Acknowledging such facts, however, is quite different from denigrating Western civilization as one long history of oppression. There’s also no good reason to actively ignore the West’s historical accomplishments. These range from the aforementioned rule of law to the development of history’s greatest poverty-reducing machine (otherwise known as the market economy), the music of Mozart, the enhancement of the scientific method, and technologies that have eradicated diseases that once limited average lifespans to 30 years of age. To say that such undertakings occurred in the West is simply the truth. It doesn’t amount to belittling other societies. Antipathy towards a culture by its direct beneficiaries doesn’t, however, just happen. It’s invariably fueled by self-doubt. In the West’s case, this particularly concerns two factors that decisively shaped its very being. The first concerns religion. Christianity is the faith to which most Westerners (at least nominally) adhere. And while its history contains many shameful episodes, Christianity also exerted a decisive influence upon the West by synthesizing Jewish wisdom, Roman law, and Greek philosophy. Unfortunately in our own time, most of the West’s senior Christian leaders seem reticent to talk about Judeo-Christian contributions to Western civilization, save in the vaguest terms. Leaving aside the sentimentalism that inevitably flows from their habitual separation of compassion from reason, many such religious leaders appear quite anxious to address topics about which they have no particular expertise qua religious leaders. Perhaps this comes from wanting to be “relevant.” But when the desire to be relevant or a “player” in Brussels or Washington, D.C. makes religious leaders reticent to speak about (or apparently embarrassed by) their faith’s core teachings, it’s often symptomatic of an inner ambiguity about whether they believe that faith is true. Related to this is the manifest doubt throughout the West concerning the value of a second major influence upon its development: i.e., the seventeenth and eighteenth century Enlightenments and modernity more generally. You can find widespread anti-modernity sentiment across the current political spectrum. It ranges from a type of radical traditionalist who yearns for guilds and small villages to the far-more numerous environmental activists proclaiming imminent apocalyptic doom. What such disparate groups often share is a somewhat romantic view of the pre-modern Western world, and a consequent predisposition to forget — or not care — that, for all their undoubted strengths, life for millions of people in pre-modern societies was also, to cite Hobbes, “poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Not everything that flowed from the different Enlightenments was sweetness-and-light. Their tendency to encourage hyper-specialization in the pursuit of knowledge, for example, helps explain why many contemporary economists apparently possess a freshman’s knowledge of philosophy, while some philosophers appear oblivious to Adam Smith’s most basic insights. Likewise, the reduction of all forms of rationality to empirical reason is just one instance of philosophes taking a powerful tool and making the serious mistake of absolutizing it. But neither Promethean exaggerations of the possibilities opened up by modern technology and economic creativity, nor techno-utopian tendencies to invest all one’s hopes in such things, are reasons to be flippant about the genuine moral and material benefits realized through modernity. Of course, it’s quite possible for societies to be materially prosperous but culturally adrift. And that’s precisely where the West finds itself. Economically speaking, it remains extremely well-off. Nevertheless, the West has rarely appeared more uncertain of itself and the worth of its patrimony. But when the historian Arnold Toynbee observed that “civilizations die from suicide, not by murder,” he didn’t just mean that the most serious threats come from within. His deeper point was that redeeming a civilization is largely a question of will. Upon that ever-faltering will, it seems, the West’s long-term fate presently rests. That article first appeared at The American Spectator. Source: Acton Institute You want to know one reason why so many marriages end up in divorce?
By Eric Metaxsis I’ve had a bee in my bonnet for years over something that far too many … believe in that just isn’t so. I speak, gentle listener, of the whole “soul mate” nonsense, especially when it comes to finding a husband or wife. Let me be perfectly clear: No matter how many ads for dating services you hear or trendy books you read, we simply don’t have “soul mates,” at least as our confused culture understands that term. Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t. The Bible knows nothing of romantic “soul mates.” This concept is more New Age than Christian. The Huffington Post gives nine signs that you’ve found your soul mate, the first one being: “You communicate without speaking.” Okay. One New Age website, however, gives three signs you’ve “definitely” found your soul mate: “You just connect without trying,” “Your level of communication is unmatched,” and “You create your own world together.” That’s cute, it’s nice, maybe it’s even romantic . . . but it’s certainly not true. Now all of this confusion might be kind of funny if it weren’t so harmful to naïve people who’ve fallen for this idea. Because this idea implies that somewhere out there is that “perfect person” for you, and if your marriage is not exploding with intense communication, romance, and a great sex life, well then maybe it’s because your spouse is not your “soul mate.” Men who are a little bored with their wives, or vice versa, might be tempted by a co-worker who “understands me so well and is my soul mate, or could be my soul mate.” But frankly, this is a recipe for adultery and divorce, and families end up getting dropped for “soul mates.” Once I wrote a tribute to C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters” called “Screwtape Proposes a Divorce,” in which Wasphead, my invented senior devil, says the following to Gallstone, the junior devil: “That [soul mates] do not exist is to be kept TOP SECRET. … Let’s be blunt: these humans are scouring the globe for someone with whom a relationship will require absolutely no work or compromise. … Many adult humans who have long ago dismissed Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as myths somehow persist in believing this person to exist.” The “soul mate” concept is unworkable and completely unfair to the real other person in your life. It puts enormous pressure on him or her to perform, to meet our impossible expectations. As Jerry Root and Stan Guthrie point out...putting others in God’s place—expecting them to give us what only He can—is a naked form of idolatry and will only lead to deep disappointment. Here’s another thing. The “soul mate” idea suggests that marriage is all about me, that I need to find someone who understands me perfectly, who makes me happy. Marriage should be about finding someone you can make happy. In the great teaching on marriage in Ephesians, for example, husbands are told to lay down their lives for their wives, as Christ did for the church. As J. R. R. Tolkien once wrote to his son, “No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial.” So let’s drop the whole “soul mate” talk, shall we? Marriage can be wonderfully satisfying, but that’s the result of God’s grace, hard work, and self-sacrificial love. And that is the truth. Source The Joy Project. A True Story of Inescapable Happiness.
by Tony Reinke “True happiness is not found. It finds you” (p. 97). Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We think of our chase for joy as a fundamental right — and it’s no surprise. By nature we are pleasure-seekers, though chronically unsuccessful at finding the type of joy that will endure for more than a passing moment. But what if long-lasting joy isn’t found at all? What if the deepest and most durable happiness breaks into our lives, overcomes our boredom, and ultimately finds us? What if true joy is out of our reach, but reaches for us? Read on... “From all eternity, before all time, God was alive with volcanic joy. Joy is essential to the very nature of God in the fellowship of the infinitely happy and holy Trinity. God needs nothing. He has no deficiencies. He is free from all evil and full of all good. So what does God’s eternal, unbounded, overflowing joy mean for me? For you? The Joy Project takes us into the most profound story in the universe, retold in a short book by Tony Reinke — a very thoughtful and skilled writer you can trust and enjoy.” –John Piper, Founder and Teacher, desiringGod.org; Chancellor, Bethlehem College & Seminary, Minneapolis, Minnesota “At the end of a restless day we look to the self-help gurus, but they can only give us magnifying glasses to gaze more deeply into our own navels. Lift your sights through The Joy Project, and rejoice to read that joy is actually coming for you.” –Gloria Furman, author, Glimpses of Grace and Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full “Our eyes of flesh seek joy in the wrong places, define it with a bankrupt vocabulary, and settle for it using mistaken formulas. Because we don’t know what to do but try harder and hide our shame, we get stuck and sick, depressed and despondent. This dehumanizes us, discourages us, and defeats us. But there is hope! The Joy Project is applied reformed theology at its best.” –Rosaria Butterfield, author, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert “What do you get when you combine Gretchen Ruben’s The Happiness Project with the Five Points of Calvinism and Tony Reinke’s compelling writing? You’re looking at it. It sounds like a weird and unworkable combination, but it works well and results in an outstandingly beautiful presentation of the doctrines of grace. This is the most beautiful presentation of Calvinism I’ve ever read.” –David Murray, Professor of Old Testament and Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Seminary and Pastor of Grand Rapids Free Reformed Church “We all want joy and happiness — but they seem such elusive things. We reach for them and fall, we aim and miss. For me that’s because I make them dependent on me: how I’m doing, how I’m feeling. Tony Reinke shows a far sweeter way, a way to solid joy.” –Michael Reeves, author of Rejoicing in Christ |
Craig MannersWhile much of what is written in this Blog may currently appear to be counter-cultural, given our post-truth culture, it is in no way counter-human beings. I am always for people no matter what they think, do, or may have done in their past. Where I put forward ideas or debate against certain ideology, behaviour, ideas, movements, politics, I remain very much on the side of the human beings even though I may be opposed to their worldview, behaviour and politics. Such opposition is generally out of concern for the ultimate consequences of such behaviour or ideas, especially for children. |