Culture wars in the West.

Notes Taken from Colson and Pearcey pps 209 and 210  #2      Deny that suffering and evil even exist.   Some people try to solve the problem of evil and suffering on earth saying they are merely illusions created by their own minds. Christian Science Monitor                              At Christian Scientists' meeting,  This is the strategy adopted by Christian Science and by some Eastern religions. Hinduism say that the physical universe is all an Illusion (maya) and that suffering of the body is just a misconception of the MIND. If we just train ourselves to think correctly, we can overcome all suffering through realising it does not exist. [Maya]  According to many schools of Hinduism , the world is an illusion, a play of the supreme consciousness of God. It is a projection of things and forms that are temporarily phenomenal and sustain the illusion of onen...

Notes from Colson and Peacey Pps 208- 211 If God is both All-Good and All-Powerful he will not allow evil and suffering to exist in His Creation. Yet, evil does exist. Therefore, either God is not all-good (that is why He tolerates evil), ar, he is not all-powerful (that is why He can't get rid of evil, even if He wanted to.) Men try to propose their solutions but they all fall short of the Biblical Solution. Here are the normal human solutions to these supposed contradictions: Solution #1 Deny that God exists at all. The atheist simply throws out the first proposition. If there is no God at all, then evil poses no problem. Or does it? If we follow this proposal to its logical conclusion, the problem of evil is transformed into something even worse: that nothing  is evil, and by extension, that nothing is good. If there is no God then, there is no good and no evil. They are only subjective feelings taught by our society or culture telling us what is approved and what is dis...

Einstein Thinking. The Greatest Scientist of the past Century ,the 20th century,  for him, the toughest intellectual barrier to the Christian Faith was not the question of whether God created the World or not. He saw clearly that the Universe was designed and orderly and therefore there must be a mind  behind everything, no mere chance bumping around of atoms in space. As he put it, the order of the Universe "reveals an intelligence of such superiority" that it overshadows all human intelligence. He believed vehemently in a causal order unifying nature from top to bottom. What Stymied Einstein? It was the problem of evil and suffering. Knowing there must be a designer, he agonized over the character  of that designer. How could God be good yet allow terrible things to happen to people? Because he could not reconcile the problem of evil and suffering with a good God, he turned away from the God of the Bible.  He was a determinist. He always said that we we...

"A God who did not abolish suffering - worse, a God who abolished sin precisely by suffering - is a scandal to the modern mind. "  Peter Kreeft. C. Colson and N. Pearcey p.203 ranker.com He ate grasshoppers just to troll his friends The year was 1942, and the scene was the crowded front parlour  of Albert Einstein's home, where the famous physicist had arranged a tea party for three clergymen: a young orthodox rabbi named Dov Hertzen, a middle-aged Catholic Priest named Brian McNaughton and a liberal Protestant Theologian named Mark Hartman. Albert Einstein's Out of my Latter years and  The World as I see it. "Rabbi Hertzen here 'provoked' this little party," Einstein began, as soon as the men had sampled the tea and cookies. " He congratulated me on my open-mindedness when I dropped my belief in a static Universe. Not long ago, I observed Hubble's red-shifts for myself at Cal Tech." Einstein leaned back in his chair and ...

After a Prison term the late Chuck Colson was ministering in prisons all over the world. In Colson and Yancey p.143 we have his summation of her experience with this young boy, "God knew when He created Max that he would need extra help in this world., so God keeps His Hands cupped around Max. He doesn't let him go. I know that wherever Max is, God is holding him gently in His hands. How could a child who is held by God be anything but a gift?" How Precious!Max was born after a frightening long labour and difficult birth. He just loves people and is at hit happiest when in the middle of a group of other kids. The fact is that Max has touched more lives than any other little guy I know. But Max is exactly the kind of child that the modern eugenics crowd would snuff out while still in the womb - or, if his "defect" couldn't be detected there, then on the delivery table. Or even if others had their way, in the first weeks of life. The truth is that the ...

Today we are going to compare these two. The Hedonistic Self-gratification which leads to anarchy and suicide or the Biblical View of Obedience to God and Rich Rewards. The Christian Worldview sets a very High Value on Human Life. This is not just biological Life. We are more than just a body. We are spiritual beings who live in a body. Some things are more important that biological Life. Obedience to God is one of them. Isaiah, the great Prophet of the Old Testament, while inditing the People of Judah said, " Isa 1:18  Come now, and let us reason together, says Jehovah; though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool. Isa 1:19  If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; Isa 1:20  but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of Jehovah has spoken. Even though your sins have so deeply stained you life, like the scarlet die from tha...

Colson p.185  When Colson went to a women’s prison to speak for Prison Fellowship to the inmates he wanted to see Susan  Smith. She had drowned her two small sons by letting her car slide into a lake with them still strapped into their car seats. Her new date said that these two children would be a hindrance to her marrying him. She turned out to be an ordinary woman sitting on the front row. The face of evil is frighteningly ordinary.  What about the 11 year old and thirteen year old who pulled the school fire alarm, assumed sniper positions and then start shooting the students as they file out. They kill four students and a teacher and wounded eleven others. There are freckled faced teenage killers. There are killers on the streets and in the suburbs. What does evil look like? Just like the murderers with ‘Survival of the Fittest’ tee shirts at Columbine High School in Colorado. “Columbine High School was the site of one of the deadliest mass shootings in mod...