Do you want a thoughtful, purposeful life?
Welcome.
The other night, while I was at an outdoor cookout, I got into a very interesting conversation with a friend of a friend. Her outlook on life was quite different from my own, which led me to ask a number of questions to better understand where she was coming from, how she saw life, and what was important to her.
Overall, we were having an engaging, lively conversation about a wide array of topics.
Self-deception is a universal problem. For instance, we are prone to believe that we are all above average. Here are some particularly humorous examples to illustrate the point!:
From the academic world:
I love to say “yes” to people. There is a real pleasure in making someone else happy, seeing their needs met, and in honoring God, all by using the gifts He’s given me to benefit another person.
Saying “yes” when that requires a sacrifice – going to an inconvenient location, staying a bit later on campus when my family is waiting for me at home – is certainly harder. But I remind myself that the life of a disciple is not supposed to be easy. Saying “yes” in these moments is one way to demonstrate the reality that God’s kingdom is more important than my own interests.
“A Collision with God” is a sermon on Mark 10:35-45, given on June 24th, 2012, at a regional worship gathering for Church of the Cross in Boston, MA.
You are welcome to give this sermon in other contexts (for instance, at a church service), but please do not reproduce the written text elsewhere.
Passage: Mark 10:35-45 (read at Bible Gateway – link opens in new window)
Let’s start our time together with some honesty. Who do you relate to best?
James and John, the other disciples, or Jesus?
A few years ago I played in an Ultimate Frisbee league in Boston. The league is a casual one. Generally, teams don’t meet up to practice, but the members show up each week, play hard, and might decide to socialize afterwards. Overall, it is an amazing environment for playing Frisbee. People are laid back, friendly, and have a great attitude towards the sport.
When I was younger (and, more importantly, single), I had a habit of typing up Bible verses, printing them out, and taping them to doors and walls in my apartment.
In retrospect, it was a pretty classy decorating technique. Photos of friends, posters of cultural events, objets d’art – these were all beneath my refined sensibilities. My elevated aesthetic sensibilities led to a stark minimalism: blank white canvases and rows of printed Bible verses.
What is the most important question in the world? That’s hard to say, but one weighty contender has to be the question, “Who is God?” Whether you’re Richard Dawkins or a Bible-thumping KJV Christian, how you answer that question is of great consequence.
Do you have a plan for personal growth? Do you know where your life is headed? If not, you need to develop a Life Plan!
If you already have a plan for personal growth, you know why I’ve decided to focus on this: the tremendous benefits that come from knowing both your destination and how you plan to get there.
Want more friends? Better conversations? Frequent, life-changing spiritual encounters? But wait, there’s more! What if you could also avoid dead-end discussions, pointless arguments, and go-nowhere debates? Then you should be interested in Tactics, a book by Greg Koukl, the President of Stand to Reason Ministries.
The fact is that many Christians feel intimidated by evangelism. Many atheists are frustrated with the same old cliches being read to them from the same pre-packaged scripts. We all need a new way forward if we’re going to have important but respectful conversations about what really matters.
Tactics is an outstanding book for three main reasons:
Earlier this week I posted “Moral Clarity and Richard Dawkins,”which was then reposted and discussed at the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science website. My first response to the comment thread pointed out the frequent logical fallacies (and incivility) in the comment thread.
Today I want to continue an effort to raise the bar of dialogue with the RDFRS community. My goal in this post is to address the more substantive comments at their site. Before doing so, a brief recap of the original argument is in order.
In “Moral Clarity and Richard Dawkins” I offered the metaphor of a house with a foundation, main floor, and a roof. The foundation is the meta-ethical theory, the main floor is our ethical theory, and the roof is our behavior. I then looked at Richard Dawkins’ overall ‘moral house’ to see how well his meta-ethical theory supports his ethical system and behavior.