Category: The Christian Spirit

Reflections on living as a disciple of Christ.

The Abandonment of Biblical Education

  

I’ve been cataloging the biggest failures of the church in our day, beginning with a watered-down salvation message, then on to our lack of renewed minds when it comes to putting the faith into practice, allowing worldly thinking to dominate. There’s one more leg on the three-legged stool of failure—the abandonment of Biblical education. In early America, most education was centered in the church or home, and the lion’s share of the home-schooled portion of society was Christian also. That… Read more »

Biblical Consistency & the Renewed Mind

  

Yesterday’s post singled out the most foundational problem in the church today—a weak/falsified salvation message. Today, I turn to the problem of the misapplication of the faith, either by lack of knowledge or the adoption of ideologies that contradict Biblical principles. I want to be clear that many of the people I am referring to today may actually be sincere Christians, but uninformed or led astray by ideas that sound good on the surface but are inconsistent with Biblical truth…. Read more »

The Real Salvation Message

  

In my post yesterday, I listed three key areas in which I believe the church of Jesus Christ is failing in its mission. Today, I’d like to comment on the foundational failure—the watering down of the message of salvation. While this certainly doesn’t apply to all individual churches and Christian leaders, there are far too many who, in their desire to bring people to the faith, make it so palatable that the faith of the apostles is hardly recognizable. The… Read more »

C.S. Lewis: The Question of Truth

  

Lewis took on the role of an apologist for the Christian faith. In an essay entitled “Christian Apologetics,” he honed in on one of the big problems Christians have when trying to explain the truth of Christianity. It’s not a problem with the message itself, but with the hearers of the message: One of the great difficulties is to keep before the audience’s mind the question of Truth. They always think you are recommending Christianity not because it is true… Read more »

My Teaching Ministry–Final Thoughts

  

When I began this series last week, I didn’t know it would last this many days. I had thought of providing a general overview, but as it progressed, I sought to share more details. I left out a lot of the pain. As I’ve told a number of people recently, the fact that I still believe in Christian higher education is one of the Lord’s minor miracles. There was a period in which I seriously debated within myself whether to… Read more »

My Teaching Ministry–Part IV

  

After the Lord turned my heart around again, I sought to teach fulltime at a Christian university. During my adjunct stint at Regent—the same time the Lord spoke to me while driving the car (see last Friday’s post)—one of my students informed me that there was an opening for a history professor at the university where he had just received his undergraduate degree. Since he was impressed with my teaching, he opened the door by contacting the department chair. I… Read more »

Lewis: Screwtape on Middle Age

  

One of the books that catapulted C. S. Lewis to worldwide fame was The Screwtape Letters, published in the early 1940s. It was a fanciful interpretation of how a senior devil—Screwtape—gives advice to a junior devil—Wormwood–on how to lead people into sin and ensure they never enter into a relationship with God. Here’s part of that “advice”: The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these… Read more »