by | Apr 5, 2024 | Uncategorized
Richard Dawkins’s cultural “Christianity” could hollow out our faith far more efficiently than straightforward attacks.
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
One of the most notorious atheists has had a “come to Jesus” moment. He’s also figured out, at long last, a way to undermine the Christian religion he loathes. And, unlike his previous efforts, this one could actually work.
Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, was among the most recognized proponents of New Atheism, a movement to reject the existence of God that had its golden era 15 or 20 years ago. Indeed, he was one of the movement’s “four horsemen,” along with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.
What was “new” about all of this was hardly the arguments, which were usually warmed-over Bertrand Russell. It was the fighting mood of it all. Audiences could feel a vicarious sense of “aren’t we naughty?” counterculturalism when they heard Hitchens ridiculing not just televangelists or abusive priests but Mother Teresa as a fraud. This theatricality eventually wore thin, until even fellow atheists seemed embarrassed by it.
But now Dawkins emerges again, this time in a viral video arguing for Christianity … kind of. He notes the plummeting of church attendance and Christian identification in his country, the United Kingdom, and says that, on one level, he’s glad to see it. Yet on the other hand, Dawkins continues, he’s “slightly horrified” to see the promotion of Ramadan in the UK. After all, he’s a Christian in a Christian country.
Lest anyone be confused, Dawkins made clear that he’s a “cultural Christian, … not a believer.” He loves the hymns and the Christmas carols and …
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by | Apr 4, 2024 | Uncategorized
The total eclipse is the latest of many apocalyptic expectations corrupting our view of Revelation.
Next week’s solar eclipse has stoked the flames of end-time speculations, once again whipping doomsday theorists into a frenzy.
As the April 8 event will take place primarily over North America, some in the US are anticipating a great Day of Judgment complete with terrorist attacks, biological warfare, and nuclear meltdowns. According to alt-right conspiracy theorists, including some fringe evangelical leaders, this war will usher in a new world order in which Christ will return and America (alongside Israel) will rule the nations.
This isn’t the first time apocalyptic predictions were based on impending eclipses—the same thing happened in 2017. But end-of-world interest seems to have increased over the last few years, as things like the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas conflict have meant nearly every region of the globe has faced some sort of calamity. These and other recent tribulations have led many believers to conclude that the end is near. In fact, a Pew Research Center study found in 2022 that over 60 percent of evangelical Christians in the US believe we are living in the end times.
But while some passages in the Bible do link astronomical phenomena with “the end” (Matt. 24:29; Joel 2:31), doomsday prophets fail to explain why their biblical, global, and cosmic calculus often revolves around America. They further neglect the fact that an eclipse happens somewhere on Earth approximately every 18 months—and that these solar events have been associated with imminent doom for thousands of years without consequence.
And yet, based on the book of Revelation, end-time conspiracists are correct in one aspect of their eschatology: We are …
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by | Apr 4, 2024 | Uncategorized
If anything, the historical details are even messier than Susan Lim’s new account allows.
What does history have to do with faith? Everything. As Paul attests in 1 Corinthians 15, Christ died. He was buried. He was raised on the third day. And then “he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve,” and then “to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time (vv. 5–6). Because Jesus’ work for his people unfolded on earth for everyone to see, the apostles proclaimed historical events.
What, then, does faith have to do with history? Again, everything. The events proclaimed include the Messiah’s death and resurrection, and faith grasps Jesus’ and the apostles’ interpretation of these events, for Christ died for our sins (1 Cor. 15:3) and was raised for our justification (Rom. 4:25). Christians have long embraced the maxim of “faith seeking understanding,” which entails reasoning and asking questions about the content of our faith, as Augustine explains in his Confessions—but always against a backdrop of ultimate confidence in God and the truths of Scripture.
Susan C. Lim models these habits in her book Light of the World: How Knowing the History of the Bible Illuminates Our Faith. Lim, a Biola University history professor, tells the story of how Scripture came to be, detailing all the twists and turns, all the complex debates and deliberations, that resulted in a settled tradition of which books constitute God’s Holy Word. This story, as she demonstrates, is far from neat and tidy—but understood rightly, can strengthen our trust in both the Bible and God’s sovereign guidance over human affairs. Lim wants her readers to join her in the spirit and faith of the Virgin Mary, asking, “How can this be?” (Luke …
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by | Apr 4, 2024 | Uncategorized
Astronomy teaches us to see the light in the world’s darkness.
At the climax of the crucifixion story, darkness comes over the land. Jesus, crowned with thorns, cries out. The earth quakes; the temple curtain is ripped in two. God’s moment of greatest love seems like defeat: a fissure between heaven and earth. But, the Gospels hold, this isn’t the end of the story. The darkness ends, and Sunday morning comes. The stone in front of the grave is rolled away. “Do not be afraid,” an angel declares. “He has risen.”
I’ve often wished I had been there to see this cosmic event with my own eyes. To witness it. To know beyond a shadow of a doubt this was the Son of God. Alas, I wasn’t. I’ve seen no visible stone rolled back nor angelic appearances to light my shadowy doubts or fill those tenacious cracks of spiritual night.
But I have seen a total solar eclipse.
I witnessed the eclipse in 2017, camping in the Smoky Mountains. It’s easy to describe the events leading up to it: the eight-hour drive, the worry about clouds, the marshmallows, mosquitos, and building excitement. But how to describe when the moment hit?
Here are some words I wrote down: wind, cold, 360-degree sunset, crickets, stars, the end of the world.
You see it coming. There’s a shadow, a hundred miles wide, racing toward you, faster than thought. And then it hits. In my memory, it’s like plunging under water. The sound all changes, with a swoosh, like in movies. And the light—it’s not water you’re swimming in. It’s liquid metal. Everything silver, platinum, bizarre. The sun is gone, replaced by an ink-black pupil surrounded with a wild white iris of solar atmosphere.
“Or a morsel of bone,” writes author Annie Dillard in her essay …
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by | Apr 3, 2024 | Uncategorized
The real-life John Blackthorne was an Englishman who came to be known as Anjin. What the letters he left behind reveal about his relationship with God.
In Shizuoka, the prefecture of Japan where I grew up, you can find a park dedicated to the first Englishman to enter Japan. A small public space along the water in the city of Itō, it commemorates Miura Anjin, or William Adams, who arrived in the country when his ship washed up on its shores.
Captured by local leaders, Anjin was put in the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu—the first shōgun (a chief army commander who ruled Japan) of the Edo period—which led to his ascendancy as the first Westerner to become a samurai, earning him the nickname of “blue-eyed samurai.” Itō’s annual Anjin Festival in August commemorates his accomplishment in building the first Western-style ships in 1604, and Japan has honored him by registering his burial mound, Anjin-zuka in Yokosuka, as a national historical landmark.
Shōgun (2024), currently playing on FX, takes its inspiration from the lives of Anjin and Tokugawa. Set in the year that Anjin first stepped foot in Japan, it tells the story of an English ship pilot named John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) who washes ashore and is taken captive by Japanese bushō (“warrior lord”) Toranaga Yoshii (Hiroyuki Sanada). Blackthorne soon becomes entangled in Toranaga’s political rivalry with four other bushōs and ultimately witnesses the rise of Toranaga as a shōgun. Writers and producers Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks based their TV series on James Clavell’s bestselling novel with the same title published in 1975, which sold over 15 million copies and subsequently became a popular TV show in 1980.
Just as the original novel grew the general public’s interest in Japanese culture, the 2024 FX adaptation undoubtedly will inform many about Japanese culture …
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