Category: The Christian Spirit

Reflections on living as a disciple of Christ.

Les Miserables, Whittaker Chambers, & Delayed Revelation

One of the best movies I’ve seen in some time and one of my favorite historical subjects of study come together. First, the movie. I saw Les Misérables a couple of weeks ago and have intended to write about it. Too many other pressing topics intervened. Yet it’s still around in theaters, so if I can encourage anyone else to see it who has neglected to do so, I will have performed a public service. At first, I wasn’t quite… Read more »

C. S. Lewis: The Reality of a Belief

When C. S. Lewis’s wife Joy died, he went through a crisis of faith. He wrote a book at the time into which he poured out his questions to God. It was called A Grief Observed. This quote is taken from that book, and is part of what he had to learn through this experience. You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is… Read more »

Media Distortion & the Christian Response

Last week I wrote about the main problems I see in the church today, and why Christians aren’t making as much of an impact on the culture as we should be. I wanted to be sure we understand that’s where the greatest blame lies. We must always examine ourselves before pointing fingers elsewhere. Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy, but there are other times when deliberate distortion of Biblical positions and those who espouse them takes center stage…. Read more »

Lewis: The Atheist Dilemma

C. S. Lewis had to make the journey from atheism to Christianity. In his book Mere Christianity, he explains how he came up against the lack of logic in his atheistic position: [When I was an atheist] my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was… Read more »

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 »