Snapshots and Synapses

Have you ever asked yourself this question: “Is God real?”. Be honest. I know I have. I can honestly say I’ve asked it more than once. I asked it as a youth, and I asked it as a college graduate . Although to be fully transparent, I asked it differently; I asked: “God if You are real, then…”  I don’t know if that difference is important or not, but in my case, in both instances, I received an answer. It wasn’t just an intellectual curiosity, but a matter of importance for me. To be honest, someone who is simply intellectually curious does not deserve an answer. I don’t mean to be offensive, but consider this: there either is a God or there is not and that reality makes all the difference.  Someone who is merely intellectually curious hasn’t stopped to consider the gravity of this question because the reality of God changes everything. First, we have to consider what is meant by the term “God”. Looking at last week’s blog , there are two possible “gods”, one of our ow...

I heard someone once say that from a philosophical perspective, the atheist has a greater challenge than the theist. He went to describe how the theist only needs to prove the existence of his god, but that the atheist has to disprove every possible god, of which there are multitude. But to be honest, I don’t believe there are really more than two gods: 1) a God Who is truly almighty and all-knowing and 2) the god of our own choosing. The god of our own choosing may be a collection of numerous gods that mutually rule over all reality or it may be the belief in a single ruler higher than all other beings.  But wait… how does this differ from option 1? If the god of our choosing is a single, omnipotent ruler, isn’t that the same as the God of Judeo-Christian religion? Not necessarily. A person could chose to believe in a single, omnipotent being that is different in nature from the God Who Lives. Meanwhile, the atheist would argue that there is no god who is truly real and ...

How do you pray, and by that question, what I'm asking is really: "How are you praying on a regular basis?" Jesus gave us five things that we should pray on a regular basis. He lists these in Luke 11:2-4 in what we call the Lord's Prayer: Father, let Your Name be kept holy.  Let Your kingdom come.  Give us our bread day by day. Forgive us as we forgive everyone else.  Don't allow us to be tempted. ONE What does it mean to keep the Name of God the Father holy? It means we set it apart from all other names. It's in a class of it's own, and by our lives we should be glorifying it as the Name above all other Names. We honor the Father, when we praise the Son, glorifying Jesus' Name, which in Hebrew means: "Yahweh Saves!" And yet when we pray that God's Name be kept holy, we are praying for the culture around us to keep His Name holy, set apart.  TWO We pray for His Kingdom to come, a prayer for Jesus' triumpha...

In last week's blog , I promised to come back with some follow-on thoughts. In some ways, I believe God sees countries like He sees a person (Jer 2-3, Ez 16, Hos 1), and in some ways, I believe He looks at people like He does a country. Take Israel for example: Biblical Israel is a divine analogy for each of us as individuals. He lifts us from the pit, from the muck and mire, and sets our feet upon a firm foundation (Psalm 40). He builds us up, slowly from our perspective. God blesses our attempts to follow Him, and He fills in our gaps and our imperfections, of which there are many. Looking back to America’s origins, we see an imperfect attempt to follow God’s ways. Yes, there were deists among the founding fathers, but there were also true Christians, and they had a profound influence in the formation of America. For example, take a look at Washington’s 1st Inaugural Address, where He consecrated this country to the Almighty God saying:  it would be peculiarly imp...

This blog is not about the wickedness or virtues of America per se, but I believe America can be used for illustrative purposes.  The America I’m living in is very different from the one I knew as a kid. As a society we valued truth and hated lies. While things were far from perfect, the adults I knew were more interested in personal integrity than advancing a collective agenda. It’s hard to find an unbiased report of Joe Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign , but I remember him as a top candidate who dropped out of the race because he lied. Back then, character mattered to the American people, and if someone lied, the America of 1988 wouldn’t accept them as viable presidential candidate. Things have changed significantly in 32 years. But wait! Hasn’t America always been corrupt? For example: slavery and racial injustice were cornerstones of this country, right? It’s true that slavery existed in America from its very beginnings. It was a blight upon the British empire and a...