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273 days ago
This year has been a challenging but exciting ride. Hillary and I have moved. We are currently living in a loft in south Dallas. It’s an artsy community with tons of stuff to do. I have a longer commute to school, but it’s a better situation overall. And our pet rabbit Petunia has adjusted nicely. Meanwhile I finished my Master of Theology degree and am in my second semester of PhD work in Philosophy of Religion. Hillary is busy with photography. Between artistry and studies, we’ve had to work hard to get by. But God is good. As for ministry, we’ve had some great opportunities these last few months. * South Africa Teaching Trip—last summer John traveled with a group from Southern Evangelical Seminary. The group is called T.E.A.M (Tactical Evangelism and Apologetics Mission). We went into Johannesburg, Pretoria and Potchefstrum, South Africa and taught in universities and churches on apologetics topics like the New Atheistm, occultism, defending the faith, worldview thinking, and ...
278 days ago
1. Eric Clapton "Tears in Heaven" 2. Led Zeppelin "Going to California" 3. White Stripe "Icky Thump" 4. Jeff Buckley (version) "Hallelujah" (the original might be better but I forget the artist) 5. Led Zeppelin "Over the Hills and Far Away" 6. The Guess Who "American Woman" 7. Queen "Bohemian Rhapsody" 8. Cake "Going the Distance" 9. Doby Gray "Drift Away" 10. Keller Williams "Kidney in a Cooler"
278 days ago
[I haven't written many sermons lately, and rarely any more do my sermons speak outside of apologetics purposes anymore. So when I found myself jotting these sermon notes down this sunday, I surprised even myself. This is a little Christmas message about grace] "The Un- Sermon" There is perhaps no subject matter more fundamental to life and reality than the doctrine of God. And the link between God and man is grace alone. So that makes grace the single most important lifeline that man can hold onto. Or, if you think about it another way, God's grace is the ocean where we are all afloat. Were God's sustaining grace not present, then we would sink into non-existence. I'm not merely talking about whether we go to heaven, I'm talking about whether our electrons will still revolve around their nuclei within our every atom; whether or leptons and quarks will continue to exist at a subatomic level; whether our bodily organs will continue to function and cooperate, and whether our ...
278 days ago
Eugenics or "good genes" refers to selective breeding techniques designed to "improve the race." Usually this meant aborting babies and sterilizing people so they can't pass on their problems to children. But on the lighter side it also included birth control--however, this was birth control for the sake of social evolution (which we'll get to later). Today, eugenics is a dirty word. And rightfully so. It paints over so much inhumanity, racism, genocide, with a thin excuse of "bettering the world." Eugenics conjures images of Nazi Germany sterilizing the handicapped, of Gattaca where "inferiors" are not allowed to live, and of sterilized imbeciles in insane asylums. But little do Americans know that it was U.S. social policies which Hitler claimed as inspiration for his eugenics legislation in WWII. How could such an aweful practice sprout on American turf? The seedbed of ideas is not hard to find. The eugenics policies that were passed in ...
278 days ago
Doubt can be a scary place. In a turning and transient world, when time flies too fast for our memory to follow, and our business is busyness, change seems to be the only constant. We cope by finding bits of solid ground to stand on. We survive by forging little nooks of security, places where we feel safe, where boring is good, and dependability is golden. We need bastions of protection just to get by. Sure we don't mind the swirling dervish of life sometimes, but we need breaks between the rides. We all need solid ground to stand on. Doubt can be like that whirling ride, or it can be a diminished spot of ground beneath us. If doubt overtakes us, we either cannot get off the ride anymore, or we step off it into emptiness. But lets be honest. Everyone doubts. Doubt is like taxes, its obligatory. Sure, we wouldn't want to doubt ourselves into an asylum somewhere, but we also wouldn't want to be a naive gullible, a comparative bunny rabbit in this predatory world. How then can we ...
