Thinking to Believe

It can be difficult to start a conversation with someone regarding spiritual things. Here are some possibilities I’ve come up with:

1. What is your worldview?
2. Do you think there is anything beyond the physical world?
3. Everyone recognizes that there is something broken about our world. What do you think the problem is?
4. What is your hope in? What do you draw hope from?
5. I’m curious. Do you believe in God? If not, why not?
6. I’m a believer in God. Since you’re not, I would be interested to give you some of the reasons I believe in God and get your take on them.
7. Have you ever read the Bible? If so, what did were your thoughts on it?
8. What do you think about the person of Jesus?

Do you have any others that you’ve found helpful?

I completely forgot to mention that I was doing a series on the atonement for the Thinking to Believe podcast. It is a four part series. The final episode just went live.

The series seeks to explain the meaning of Jesus’ death and how it stands at the center of the Christian faith. Episode 1 explores the nature of Jesus’ mission, the OT sacrificial system as a means of atonement, and the necessity of the incarnation for God to fully and finally satisfy both His desire for justice and His desire for mercy.

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Naturalism cannot support the idea that human beings have real, intrinsic value. This is a feature of the Judeo-Christian theology of the imago Dei – that we are made in the image of God. Absent this theological foundation, there is no reason to think human value is real. At best, humans only have a subjective, extrinsic value; i.e. our value is derived from our own estimation of ourselves. Human beings value particular traits that they possess, and thus value the human beings who possess such traits (a circular, biased, and wholly subjective estimation). This sort of value, however, is fictitious. It only exists in our minds, and it only extends to those that we think it extends to. This value is never equal, and it rarely applies to all human beings. Some human beings will be considered to be more valuable than others, and some will be deemed to have no value at all.

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Conservatives are happier than liberals – especially women.

Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia did a study on happiness and found that conservatives were much happier than liberals, especially women. More than twice as many conservative women claim to be completely satisfied with their lives compared to liberal women. Why? Among other things, because conservatives were much more likely to be married than liberals.

Feminism has sold women a bag of goods that happiness is to be found in pursuing careers over family and that family structures must be egalitarian. This will not produce happiness.