Tag Archives: God

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An Encounter with God

The Christians in the miracles and healing and spiritual gifts movements call it an encounter with God…I am wondering what in the world that is and means!  My friend, who you have listened to regarding miracles and healings, invites me to come to his last teaching engagement of the summer before he goes back to the mission field.  At the end of the service, I am watching him laying hands on people for healing etc.  There is a very strange woman rocking back and forth and waving her hands in the corner of the church.  This woman later walks up to me with her friend and asks to pray for me…as she is praying she is humming and talking jibberish aka speaking in tongues? but the English that she is speaking/praying out loud is about what God has put on her heart to share with me–God tells her-through prayer-things about me and my family that ONLY God could know! WOW!  What can a skeptic like me say to this?!!  The Christians who walk in these circles call it ‘getting your mail read’ when someone prays for you and speaks things that ONLY God could know about you.

What do you think?

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Love your Enemies

I recently had a conversation with a friend at work who mentioned that a skeptic friend of his pointed out that the God of the Old Testament seems to be a different God from the New Testament using the classic example: O.T.=eye for an eye; N.T.=turn the other cheek.

Here is a classic Mike Erre sermon from the sermon on the mount in which he explains this supposed contradiction.

Take home: eye for an eye laws were VERY progressive at the time and were created by God to promote societal justice whereas turn the other cheek teaching of Jesus was what we as individuals should continue to strive to do.

Here is another great summary of eye for an eye laws vs. turning the other cheek

As always, please share with us your thoughts!

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God Questions Part 3: Evil and Suffering

This topic has hit me personally right between the eyes this last few years.  Bucky and I discuss evil and suffering in this session of the God Questions at Pathways Church (www.ocpathways.org)

You can also read this brief collection of information that I put together concerning evil and suffering:

The 5-C’s of Evil and Suffering

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God Questions Part 1

Bucky and I did a sermon series together titled: The God Questions.  Here is Part 1 of 4.  This is an introduction by Bucky to the journey, the questions, the talking time with our friends about these life changing questions.  Please let me know your thoughts about these messages.

The 3 key themes through out our series were:

  1. Love: It is the MOST exciting adventure of our lives to explore the key questions in life.  Why not do it with love? We want to emphasize the key to any time in discussion with someone must be with love.
  2. Listen:  The best answer is a question.  Too much time has been spent NOT listening to the other person in the discussion of these important questions of life.  If you don’t know or don’t understand, then listen!
  3. Learn: This is a team effort.  We want you to enjoy and learn from the time with others in discussion on these GREAT topics.
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Dawkins Favorite Argument

Dawkins favorite argument is simply that God cannot serve as an “adequate explanation for the universe or for life or for human beings because God himself would also require an explanation.  The chain of explanations, then, cannot end in God.”-pg 42, Dawkins’s Best Argument by Gregory Ganssle, Philosophia Christi, volume 10, no. 1, 2008

What do you think of this age old argument: If God created the universe then who created God?

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Dawkins’ Best Argument

For the geeks out there, I highly recommend the journal Philosphia Christi.  It has some very interesting articles.  In Volume 10, Number 1, 2008, I recommend: Dawkins’s Best Argument by Gregory E. Ganssle. 

Dawkins best argument according to Professor Ganssle is simply:

  1. A universe made by God would be different than one made by natural occurrences.
  2. Our universe fits better with a naturalistic universe than with a theistic universe.
  3. Therefore, our universe is more likely to be a naturalistic universe than it is to be a theistic universe.

So ultimately it comes down to which worldview is best fits the facts (and as I have said in the past, which worldview is most logical and livable)….don’t make it a shouting match but a discussion comparing worldviews to choose the one that is most logical, livable, and best fits with the facts.

Theistic worldview best fits with these 4 facts that we know to be true in our universe:

  1. The universe is ordered and susceptible to rational investigation.
  2. The universe has beings that possess consciousness.
  3. The universe has beings that possess free agency.
  4. The universe has within it objective moral obligations.

What do you think? Do we have free will? Are there objective moral obligations?  Do we possess consciousness?