Don't Judge Me By My Past

As Seen On Facebook
This meme popped up this week and caught my attention. The text reads "Don't judge me by my past. I'm not in the past anymore. Accept me for who I am because this is me today." I want to examine this from a perspective of everyday life then a perspective of the worldview implications.

My First Thought
The big question that I want to ask anyone who posts this is "if we can't judge someone by their past, how are we to know whether someone is trustworthy or not?"

As I have written in my post "Is Faith Emotional or Logical?" trust requires that we examine a person's past. If we see a past that someone has been faithful to their word and has shown themselves to be worthy of trust, then placing our trust in them is not only smart, but it is perfectly logical. On the other hand if a person has shown themselves to be untrustworthy and does not keep their word, we should not place our confidence in them.

Book Review: Truth Matters

Introduction

Tom Gender and his book Truth Matters was brought to this reviewer's attention just a few months ago. The opportunity came to receive a copy and review the book, which was gladly accepted. Excitement built after just reading the introduction and the preface. This review is designed to be a chapter-by-chapter summary to give the reader a mere taste of the content of each chapter. The reviewer's thoughts will be offered at the end of the summary. The book is 307 pages, divided into five sections. It has one appendix and an index of terms.

Preface

Before diving into the main reason for writing this book, Tom Gender provides a good worldview and logic primer for the reader to assist in properly evaluating his evidence and arguments. He begins with a quick overview of worldviews and their relationship to truth. He goes over the different general worldviews, the importance of testing each one for truth, and four different tests for truth. In the worldviews, he covers everything from atheism to panentheism. In the section on logic, he looks at three different ways to reason, then he finally proposes four different tests for discovering truth. He explains each of their strengths and weaknesses, emphasizing that all the tests must be used in tandem to keep the weaknesses in check.

Of Tornadoes, Flat Tires, and Moore

The Recent Tornadoes In Moore, OK
Many of you are aware of the recent outbreak of violent tornadoes in the middle of the United States in late May of this year. Three tornadoes struck extremely close to home for me. The first took out my wife's parents' place, and the other two (one being the EF4 on the 20th) was about one mile from our house. As I drive to work every day, I see the physical devastation. When I speak with my in-laws, I see the emotional devastation. When I heard the news of the children who lost their lives...there just are not words to describe the pain and emotions of that news. When we experience tragedies such as these, it is sometimes difficult to see that a loving God, who has our best interest in mind, could cause or allow this level of agony. The Friday after the first tornado outbreak a peculiar series of events took place that eventually ended in God making the answer to my questions very real to me.