Fear-Mongering Christians

I've always been annoyed by the "fire and brimstone" preachers and Christians. Not because I necessarily disagreed with them, but because of what they implied. Too many of them were almost trying to scare people into The Kingdom. "If you don't come to Christ, these horrible things are going to happen to you." Not only is this not appealing to most people, it comes from a very flawed way of understanding the choice that we make when we accept Christ.

When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are actively choosing Him. We are not coming to Him as a last ditch effort to avoid something unpleasant (Hell). Since we are relational creatures, we don't just pick the lesser of the discomforts, we make particular choices because we believe that they are set apart from the other options in a very distinct way.

My Take On Stephen Hawking's Comments

As many of you are aware, Dr. Stephen Hawking released some interesting statements to the media last week regarding the creation of the universe. There have been many responses, both good and bad. I’m going to start with sharing a couple of the responses that I found to be most beneficial (as of this post), then I will provide a perspective that I have not seen presented yet:

Book Review: The Risen Jesus and A Future Hope

The Risen Jesus And A Future Hope is a great book in which the Dr. Gary Habermas defends the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ and shows the practical implications of the truth of the claim. Dr. Habermas split the book into the two sections respectfully. Habermas begins his defense by laying a few foundations in Chapter 1.

The first foundation is the inductive nature of the study of history. He then discusses the difference between miracles and miracle-claims. He cautions against accepting a priori (prior to evidence) conclusions. He then provides classical arguments against miracles (David Hume) and responds to the arguments.