Is Faith Irrational?

Dr. John Patrick

A question was asked to Dr. John Patrick, a physician from England who lectures on matters of faith, science, and medicine.

“How do you suggest we respond to colleagues in the medical profession who regard our faith as irrational?”

He suggested, first of all, that we explore what’s meant by “irrational”. The word “irrational”, after all, is just a polite way of saying “crazy” or “insane”. If our faith is insane, one would expect that to manifest itself in visible ways. One would expect our lives to be chaotic, inconsistent, or disordered. Instead, we most often find the exact opposite: our lives reflect a sense of meaning, our relationships become healthier, and our thoughts and actions become subject to a higher set of standards.

In other words, living a godly life is the easiest way to dispel the notion that our faith is irrational.

The funny thing is that people of faith have plenty of room in their lives for reason. It’s modern-day secularists and rationalists who have no room in their lives for faith. Which is the bigger box? Who, then, is being small-minded?

To paraphrase the words of Dr. Patrick, our Christian faith is neither “rational” nor “irrational”. It’s supra-rational. It recognizes that human reason can only extend so far, and that there is an ultimate source of Truth beyond our powers of understanding. Science is a powerful tool, but we should recognize (with some humility) that there are certain questions that it cannot answer.

(source)

Servants Who Become Sons

Screwtape reveals the Enemy’s (Yahweh) intentions:

Now it may surprise you to learn that in His [the Enemy's] efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more that on the peaks; some of His special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of self-hood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of me is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) more propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself – creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

The scary thing about this is that you don’t know you’re being turned into food like cattle, being sucked into the lies and deceit until you give yourself up to God and allow him to be your source of strength to fight off Satan.

Sing Along 2

Phil Wickham just released Singalong 2!

Click here to download it for free.

Superstitious & Unbiblical

Why “accepting Jesus into your heart” is superstitious and unbiblical…

 

Making disciples is the supernatural overflow of being a disciple. Proclaiming the love of Christ is the overflow of sharing in the life of Christ. And I’m convinced many people in our churches are simply missing the life of Christ. And a lot of it has to do with what we’ve sold them as the gospel, i.e. ‘pray this prayer’, ‘accept Jesus into your heart’,’invite Christ into your life’. Should it not concern us that there is no such supertitious prayer in the New Testament? Should it not concern us that the Bible never uses the phrase ‘accept Jesus into your heart’?

Men, Man Up

There’s an ongoing war within our culture. Confusion over what manhood is has plagued our cities, families and lives. The concept of a biblical man has been lost in our generation. Unfortunately, many struggle with a tangible definition of a real man.

 

Lately I’ve been on a huge Lecrae/Trip Lee kick. Below are the lyrics to the music video above. (feat. Lecrae, KB, Trip Lee, Tedashii, Sho Baraka, PRo, Andy Mineo)

Mamma wants some Obama in me / The hood want PAC / Hip Hop wanna see the Common in me / And since it’s a senseless contradiction / I end up a misfit trying to fit in / This ends when I stand up and see the hands of the standard / Holy is the Lamb / Now we’re holding you to man up / ‘Cause we’re made in His image / Start looking at what you came from

Right after Adam every atom in our anatomies had to make adamant after what Adonai is against / Let me take you back to the tree in Eden / If you read it you’ll see that Eve was deceived but Adam is the one who let it in / Standing / Leading / No, we ain’t leading / Basically little boys with muscles and a mustache / The femininity / We need a remedy / The God-man / 100% masculinity

Where are the men at / Seems like they’re all lost / None of them are on the scene / Seems like they died off / They’re extinct / But my dream is to rise up / We’re chasing the prize of the King and Divine Boss / But we fell away / Now we’re ungodly / We lose and we really got the blues like Navi / I wanna celebrate the dudes that’s beside me / Fellas let’s elevate / We’re through with the lobby

Go ahead I say boy get your shine on / And if a sucker tries to block you get your 9 home / And what I heard you got to do to be a man now / Stand up for yourself / So I took it in my hands now / And that’s the problem / We’re busy trying to solve it / All the while we’re walking dead men / Somebody bring the coffin / Voice drop / Peach fuzz / You think that you’re a man because you’re feeling yourself / You need to man up

Sex and models / Tipping bottles back / A pile of excuses right next to your bottle caps / A rolodex filled with names that you aim to please / Next to the stack of money / Building up a heart of greed / Ice on his neck / Give the jokers a cold shoulder / You’re drunk off pride plus you’re loving the hangover / You gotta whole lot of stuff that won’t amount to gain / Life will never make sense because you never made change

You got it twisted / Sick like a fever / Little man live to stack dough / Keebler / Man up / Get up out of the treehouse / Leave the cookies alone / It’s time to eat meat now / Trying to show you a new way to live now / No charge / You can call it a freestyle / Without Christ you know how your man is / You’re a boy in a man’s body like Tom Hanks in Big

Being a man has nothing to do with age / You can be a boy till the day you lay in your grave / None of us behave like the image of who we’re made / ‘Cause we’ve fallen away / It’s better known as depraved / Running from responsibility / Really we crave the easy way out of places that call us to pull our weight / Men are going through it every day / Decisions are made / Responding to the call God’s giving them from the gate

Be alert against Satan.

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: 9 Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. [1 Peter 5:8-9]

Be alert against Temptation.

Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. [Mark 14:38]

Be alert against Apathy & Indifference.

And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.

I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. [Revelation 3:1-3]

Be alert against false teachers.

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. [2 Peter 2:1]

Plain and simple, STAND UP for what you know your God has taught you to be blameless and true. Quit being pushovers and start being men of God delighting in the God you serve.