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On the sin of perversion

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I've been reading Cornelius Plantinga's excellent book, Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Eerdmans, 1995). He begins by describing life as God designed it to be, namely a life of shalom , lived in right relationship with God, with each other, and with nature, resulting in peace, joy, and goodness, experienced in the presence of God. Sin, in its various forms, brings disruption to that life . It breaks, disrupts, alters, pollutes, twists, distorts, or perverts the way things ought to be .  A popular notion of perversion is that it is something that is strange or creepy or cringey when compared with what is normal to the rest of the human race, or at least, to the rest of the human race at a particular time in history. In certain cultures, practices like child prostitution and cannibalism have been accepted as normal behavior rather than perversion.  But we must realize that what makes an action (or thought or intent) perverted is how it is evaluated from G...
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Tolkien and the Great Eucatastrophe

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Those familiar with C. S. Lewis's conversion and his finding of Joy are familiar with his lifelong interest in myth and imagination. That there could be (or might be) a real, wider, magical world out there, a true Myth, was something he longed for, but as a materialist, could not personally accept. At least, at first.  Lewis was not looking for personal salvation; he was looking for a reality that the myths and his imagination were hinting at: "It is more important that Heaven should exist than that any of us should reach it." (C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy , p. 211) (Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1955) Thus, Christianity, he discovered, is the True Myth which inspires -- or properly, should inspire -- all true wonder and joy in its adherents. His close friend, J. R. R. Tolkien, had a very similar approach to the Gospel account. He called it "a eucatastrophic tale" -- a term he coins -- meaning a good catastrophe , much like a fairy-tale or ancient legend which ha...
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Overview of 1st John

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"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us..." (1:1-2)  THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN. In this first epistle from the Apostle John there are many themes carried over from the gospel which he wrote, the Gospel of John. He is writing late in the first century to a number of churches in Asia Minor (now Turkey), including Ephesus, where he lived his last years and was buried.  It seems that his readers were being tempted to move toward a hybridized philosophy of Christ, which was more acceptable to Greek thinking at that time.  This included a de-emphasis on the humanity of Jesus (some of the later Gnostics would say that Jesus was a kind of hologram from heaven), and an over-emphasis on knowl...
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Why the Resurrection of Jesus matters

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1. The Old Testament foreshadowed the resurrection of Christ. (Ps 16:10; Isa 53:11-12) 2. Jesus himself predicted it. (Matt 16:21; 17:9)   3. The Apostles witnessed it. (John 21:24; Acts 1:22) 4. The resurrection authenticates Christ’s identity. (John 11:25; Rom 1:4)  5. Christ’s resurrection is the first stage of his exaltation and return to glory with the Father. (Eph 1:20; 1 Pet 1:21) 6. It confirms the validity of our justification, by which we now can have a good conscience before God. (Rom 4:25; 1 Cor 15:17; 1 Pet 3:21) 7. Christ’s resurrection is an inseparable part of the gospel. (Acts 4:10; Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 15:3-4)  8. Because of our union with Christ, his resurrection has become the shaping power of our new life. (Rom 6:5; Phil 3:10)   9. The resurrection is proof that Christ is our living Hope. (Heb 10:20; 1 Pet 1:3) 10. It affirms the value of the human body & becomes the guarantee of our future physical resurrection....
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Naming

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"Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field." (Genesis 2:19, 20 ESV) Again and again, I marvel at the miracle of language and the power of words. Human language is not the result of evolutionary development from grunts and sounds to vocal articulation, it is the gift from a communicating Creator to his creatures made in the image of God .  German theologian Erich Sauer comments on Genesis chapter two...   "What is a word? A sound, a note, a tone which goes out of the mouth! Yet much more! A conveyor of a motion of the spirit, an instrument for manifesting the intelligence, a sign, a sound-symbol of an activity of the soul. Only through the gift of the spirit and speech man becomes really ...
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From heaven he came

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"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:5-8)  God's Son, our Lord Jesus, "took the form of a bondservant..." and came into our world. This passage, along with John 1 and others, clearly teaches the pre-existence and deity of Jesus Christ. The point here is not that the second Person of the Trinity ceased to be God, but rather that he took a human nature and dwelt among us as a man. Jesus was not two people, nor was he one person who was half-God and half-human. He is one Person with two natures. World religions may say that Jesus was a man, a great man, or even a prophet. Or they may say he was a spiritual emanation of God, ...
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Supporting witnesses

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“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning."  (John 15:26-27) We are called to be witnesses for Christ (Acts 1:8). Yet sometimes we may feel outnumbered and alone in giving our witness. Our witness is our testimony of how and why we have come to trust the Lord Jesus. It's telling about what we know to be true and our experience of it.  We may feel opposition from our hostile culture and be intimidated. Yet we need to remember our testimony, our witness, is one among many that confronts and weighs upon unbelievers .   Who are these fellow witnesses? There are seven "testimonies" to the reality of God, his power, and his grace given to us in Jesus Christ. 1)   The witness of creation (Psalm 19:1-2; Acts 14:7; Romans 1:20). People may suppress this knowledge, but there is...
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