Thinking to Believe

A lot of modern evangelism focuses on the love God. We rarely hear it preached that God is angry at us because of our moral rebellion, and we rarely hear about the coming judgment. And yet, when you look at what the early church preached in Acts, it was a lot about judgment and not a word about the love of God or inviting people to have a relationship with God (see Evangelism: Are we preaching what the early church preached?).

I’m not saying we shouldn’t preach that God loves sinners. I’m saying we need to preach both that God loves us and that we are sinners. Indeed, only if we understand that we are enemies of God does the message of God’s love and forgiveness make sense. Apart from that context, why should anyone even care that God loves them?

(more…)

The final argument for God’s existence in my podcast series, Does God Exist?, is a version of the existential argument. I argue that our deepest existential longings can only be explained by and satisfied by a theistic God: the desire for meaning and purpose in life, objective morality, immortality, free will, and love. People must either (1) believe there is a God who can satisfy our deepest longings or (2) believe there is no God and that our deepest longings are misguided and can never be satisfied.

The final episode just got published today. Check it out at https://thinkingtobelieve.buzzsprout.com, or wherever you get podcasts.

An increasing number of professing Christians will acknowledge that the Bible is opposed to some practice, but then claim that God has evolved regarding the issue and the Spirit is speaking something different to the church today. Apart from the epistemological problems that such a claim entails, isn’t it interesting that the Spirit is always being more permissive today (just like our culture)? That’s quite strange, because when God has given new revelation in the past, it was not in the direction of moral permissiveness, but in the direction of moral stringency.

(more…)

The truth of a doctrine is not determined by its age or by a historical consensus, and yet we naturally assign great weight to doctrinal tradition. After all, there’s something to be said for a historical consensus, and it should not be dismissed lightly. We should not ignore the understanding and insights of the majority who have preceded us. And in general, we should not dismiss a doctrinal tradition unless we have compelling reasons to do so.

(more…)

The design argument for God’s existence that I presented in my “Does God Exist?” podcast series could be succinctly summarized as “the universe looks designed because it was designed.”

This could be fleshed out a bit more as follows: “Our universe exhibits a level of specificity and complexity that cannot be explained by chance or physical necessity, but only by a designing intelligence who transcends the universe and intentionally designed the universe to be inhabited by advanced lifeforms such as ourselves.”

I will offer one final version with a bit more detail: “There are many features of our universe that have to be just right for intelligent life to exist, including the initial conditions. The level of precision involved defies human comprehension. It can’t be explained by pure chance and there’s no reason to think it is due to physical necessity, so the best explanation is that these features were designed by a transcendent source. Design requires a designer > A designer requires intelligence > Intelligence requires a personal being = God.”