Helping Your Freshman Survive His First Year in College: A Radio Interview
On the heels of the TGC video I did on surviving a university religion class, I have had an influx of inquiries into this topic. People have been asking all sorts of questions about how to prepare their high school student for what’s to come, or how to encourage their college student in the midst of struggles.
Last Thursday, I was invited to a radio interview with Chris Fabry Live on Moody radio in Chicago (which is nationally syndicated). We had a fascinating discussion on this topic, and had folks call in from all over the country with their questions. Here is what appeared on the moody radio website, … Continue reading...
Bumper Sticker Worldviews: Do They Make Sense?
Since the Christian worldview is largely on the defensive these days, it is easy to forget that non-Christians also have a worldview. They are not neutral or undecided about the nature of reality, but have a network of beliefs that is designed to explained the way the world works, or more importantly, the way they think it ought to work.
Some non-Christians may not even realize they have a worldview, and even those who know they have one rarely put all their intellectual cards on the table. You have to sniff around a bit to determine what some people really believe.
But then, in other situations, people just put their … Continue reading...
What Do We Mean When We Say the Bible is ‘Self-Authenticating’?
Even though most Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, very few can give an articulate answer for how Christians know this to be true. We believe it, but we are not sure why we believe it.
Of course, the average non-Christian critic out there is quick to pounce on this problem. “Christians have no reliable basis for knowing whether the Bible is God’s Word,” they might say. “You Christians can believe it if you want to, but you have no grounds for believing it. You are believing it without a reason.”
In order to address precisely this issue, I gave a lecture this past Spring … Continue reading...
Can the Ethiopian Change His Skin or a Leopard His Spots? How Postmodernity Has Led to a Culture of Hypocrisy
There has been a lot of chatter the last few weeks about Rachel Dolezal, civil rights activist and the former head of the NAACP in Spokane, WA. Although she presented herself as African American–a bit of a prerequisite for heading up a chapter of the NAACP–it turns out that she is not black after all. Indeed she was a blonde, freckle-faced white girl born to two white parents. She has merely changed her outward appearance.
Of course, objective facts regarding biology, genetics, and ethnicity have not proven to be a deterrent to Dolezal’s insistence that she is black. “I identify as black,” she told Matt Lauer. In other words, I … Continue reading...
Are Christians Really the Arrogant Ones?
When religious matters are debated in our culture–e.g., the existence of God, what God is like, morals and ethics–there is an implicit set of rules that everyone is obligated to follow. Number one on this list of unspoken rules it that you can never claim to know anything about God with any level of certainty.
To do so quickly leads to charges of being arrogant, dogmatic, or intolerant. Christians know this all too well because we are often on the receiving end of these charges. Our claim to actually know things about God is a violation of the rules of polite society.
Of course, this sort of “polite society” is … Continue reading...