Tag: Biblical Principles

Sin, the Church, & the Nation

  

Item The New Mexico Supreme Court rules that a Christian photographer who didn’t want to photograph a homosexual wedding has to do so. Her faith was not as important as the right of the couple to force her to be their photographer. Her faith has to accommodate to their wishes because anti-discrimination is more essential than religious liberty. Item A bakery in Oregon refuses to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding. The business now faces an anti-discrimination lawsuit. Item… Read more »

Christian Education: Transformed Minds

  

Classes begin today. This will be the start of my 25th year of teaching at the college level and my 8th at SEU. My two courses today are the American history surveys—one from the colonial era through the Civil War, the other post-Civil War. Yet I give both sections the same introduction because there are some basics the students need to be reminded of. First, I offer a brief testimony of what the Lord has done in my life and… Read more »

Christian Higher Education at a Crossroads

  

The last couple days I’ve extolled Christian higher education. I believe in it with a whole heart. Yet that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems. In fact, a battle royal is currently waging for the soul of the Christian college and university. Let me comment on that today. Where does one receive a doctoral degree? Overwhelmingly, if you attain a doctorate, you’ve gotten it from a non-Christian university. Relatively few doctoral programs exist within evangelical Christian universities. I, for instance, have… Read more »

Snyderian Truism #2

  

Last week I introduced “Snyderian Truisms.” These are comments I’ve been making in class for quite some time, so I decided to turn them into official truths that I believe are undeniable. The first one was “Since God gave you a brain, He undoubtedly expects you to use it.” I give that one to my students in my American history survey courses on the very first day of class. Hopefully, it gets their attention and lets them know my expectations… Read more »

The Pillars of Christianity

  

When I was working on my master’s and doctoral degrees in history, I distinctly recall an attitude that some of my professors had toward the American colonial and revolutionary eras—they conveyed to us, their students, the idea that the leaders of those eras were just so backward when compared to the more enlightened age we live in now. I didn’t accept that attitude then; I don’t accept it now. Yes, we have progressed technologically in ways our Founders would find… Read more »

True & False Liberty

  

The latest political firestorm, the revelation of the extent of the NSA’s data-mining to include storage of records of nearly all phone calls placed by American citizens, has led to deep concerns about the liberties supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution, particularly the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. These concerns are showing up regularly in political cartoons such as this one: I share that concern. I believe in liberty. However, this controversy has also helped highlight two very… 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 »