Kreitsauce's Musings

“The Arts Enrich Us All”, or at least, that’s what one series of public-service announcements proclaim. Some Christians disagree. They are, perhaps, wary of beliefs and philosophies that run contrary to the Bible, and they are right to be concerned. David Puttnam, producer of the film Chariots of Fire, once said, “Cinema is propaganda.” What he means by this is that the Arts often have a didactic purpose. They teach. The question is, what are they teaching? Is the message acceptable? Due to the incredible danger false messages pose to the young in faith or years, some Christians encourage separation from all of the Arts, at least as much as possible. (Now, I must be clear here. When I say “Arts”, I mean all art: painting, sculpture, poetry, novels, theater, movies, popular and classical music, digital works, etc.)

However, is the mere fact that a worldview- and sometimes an incredibly false one- can be portrayed and validated by a piece of art reason enough to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Suppose a piece of art does teach a false worldview. Cannot instruction and information be given (metadata, if you will) to teach a right perspective on a wrong worldview? I would say yes, mainly because I do it all the time. In my senior apologetics class, we frequently view television and movie clips and listen to music to evaluate its worldview by the standard of Philippians 4:8. I tend to think that it is one of the most practical things we do in that class because it teaches students to be wary of the message of the art in question.

However, let us consider for a moment the concept that “non-Christian” and “worldly” are not necessarily the same thing. I mean by this that something may be good and yet not be inherently Christian. Or, a teaching may be biblical without appealing to Scripture. Consider Aesop’s fables. They’re nice little stories for kids to learn moral lessons. This doesn’t make them fit for a worship service, of course, but they do fit in nicely with a foundational Christian worldview. They enhance the teaching of Truth, which is a wonderful thing. A movie, song, or painting may do similar things.

When God created the world, did He make everything “religious”? No, certainly not. He created mountains, stars, the music of birds, the ocean’s waves, and the cool breeze. He created a beautiful world. If we are truly made in His image, what is wrong with creating that which is non-religious? Nothing, I would argue. Christians should not avoid the Arts simply because not everything about the Arts is specifically religious, nor should they endeavor to produce art that is only optimistic and “happy.” Christianity has two themes: Fall and Redemption. So much Christian artwork is both religious and strictly redemption-oriented. This is not biblical. It is romantic. Reality is that we live in a fallen world, and we often have a problem with pain simply because we expect the Christian life to be gumdrops and lollipops. We cannot ignore Truth- all Truth, or else we are left with the stuff that children’s Sunday School material is made of. Biblical art should include both themes.

Ravi Zacharias tells us  that in C. S. Lewis’ Pilgrim’s Regress, Pilgrim has been trapped in the dungeon of The Spirit of the Age. The next morning, he is served cold milk. Pilgrim thanks his captor for his milk, but the villain tells him that he is being foolish, for there is no difference between the secretions of a cow. Cow milk and cow urine are no different. This troubles Pilgrim, for there seems to be some truth to that statement. Why do we make a distinction? Suddenly, Reason comes riding in on a white horse, picks up Pilgrim, and turns to leave. Reason says to the spirit: “Sir, you lie! You have failed to distinguish between that which is nourishment and that which is excrement.”

Let us endeavor to distinguish between nourishment and excrement in the Arts, for they are both present. Let us seek that which brings nourishment to the soul- body, mind, emotions, and spirit.

As I said in my previous post, America was once a very different nation. It was a nation founded on Christianity, a fact which has been denied and covered up by historical revisionists. Here’s some quotes and statistics that have been buried by some:

• The most popular book in colonial America (after the Bible) was The New England Primer. According to Daniel S. Burt’s The Chronology of American Literature, it sold nearly 5 million copies, an astounding accomplishment when you consider that there were roughly 4 million people living in the USA in 1776. It taught Christianity in conjunction with English and morality. Here’s some examples:

• Harvard University began just a sixteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims, and included the following statements in its original Rules and Precepts. “Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3 and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him, Proverbs 2,3.”
• Gouveneur Morris, the penman of the Constitution wrote: “”Religion is the only solid basis of good morals;
  therefore, education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.”
• Benjamin Rush, the youngest signer of the Constitution wrote: “The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government…is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.”
• “It is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.”- John Adams
• “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”- George Washington, 1796
• “Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure (and) which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.” – Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence
• “Righteousness alone can exalt America as a nation…The great pillars of all government and social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone, that renders us invincible.”- Patrick Henry
• “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”- John Adams
• “To preserve the government we must also preserve morals. Morality rests on religion; if you destroy the foundation, the superstructure must fall. When the public mind becomes vitiated and corrupt, laws are a nullity and constitutions are waste paper.”- Daniel Webster
• Then there’s the oath of office from the original Delaware Constitution: “I, _____ do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”
• “Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity with peace; and whereas in our settling (by a wise providence of God) we are further dispersed upon the sea coasts and rivers than was at first intended, so that we can not according to our desire with convenience communicate in one government and jurisdiction; and whereas we live encompassed with people of several nations and strange languages which hereafter may prove injurious to us or our posterity.”- The Articles of Confederation
• “I therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business.”- Benjamin Franklin (He doesn’t sound to much like a deist or agnostic here, now does he?)
• “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions but on the gospel of Jesus Christ.” -Patrick Henry
• “The Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis and the source of all genuine freedom in government….I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable, in which the principles of Christianity have not a controlling influence.”  -James Madison

Where will we wind up if we continue on our course away from God? What will happen to us if we completely destroy our foundations? I talked about Rome in the last post. Alexander Solzhenitsyn has another, more recent answer for us, and his analysis is frightening:

“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

Recently I’ve been reading a book entitled Starlight, Time, and the New Physics, which was published in 2007 by Dr. John Hartnett, a professor from the University of West Australia. He has earned a Ph.D. in Physics, and he has published over 120 papers in scientific journals and holds two patents. Shockingly, Hartnett is also a young-earth creationist. The way Darwinists talk, Christians and physicists could never play nice, especially when it came to cosmology and the origin of the universe. What’s funny is that Hartnett has a scientific problem with the Big Bang Theory. Well, actually he has several.

1. Uniformity of Background Radiation- If the universe began 13.7 billion years ago courtesy of the Big Bang, why is the background radiation (the “temperature” of empty space) virtually the same in all directions? Unless Earth really is the center of the universe, or at least very close to it, the temperature of space in one direction of the universe shouldn’t be the same as in the opposite direction. The radiation from each end of the universe hasn’t had time to “blend” or balance each other out, since it should take twice as long (at least) as the universe has existed according to the Big Bang theory for radiation from one end of the universe to make it to the other.
2. Galactic Recession- No, I’m not talking about the results of Obama’s stimulus package. To the surprise of most scientists, a survey of the galaxies shows that they are all receding (moving away from) our own Milky Way. It shouldn’t be true that all galaxies are receding unless the Milky Way really is very near the center of the universe. Of course, this idea is unpalatable to Darwinists, since it would make our home planet seem too “special.”
3. Dark matter- Galaxies shouldn’t be able to hold themselves together without more mass, so scientists have assumed that unobservable “dark matter” must exist. Therefore, of all the matter and energy in the universe, scientists assume that roughly 21% of the matter in the universe is “dark.” This is compared to the 4% of visible matter that can be observed in the universe. Since dark matter is not visible, its existence has been strictly inferred. Some scientists include brown dwarf stars, which are far too rare to account for all the “missing” matter. Others include theoretical supermassive black holes and axions.
4. Dark energy- In 1998, scientists discovered that, contrary to popularly-held belief, the expansion of the universe was accelerating rather than decelerating. In order to explain why gravity wasn’t slowing the rate of expansion, scientists theorized that a phenomenon known as “dark energy” was acting on the universe to increase the rate of expansion. This dark energy is also inferred.
5. Quasars- Quasars are star-like phenomena thought to exist near the edges of the visible universe. The reason scientists believe that they come from near the edges of the visible universe is because of redshift. According to scientists, redshift occurs when light is “stretched” as it travels through an expanding universe, or due to galactic recession. Quasars are extremely red-shifted, which means that- according to the Darwinistic scientists- they came from very far away. That theory hit a brick wall a few years ago when scientists discovered a quasar in the heart of a galaxy only 300 million light years away. That’s way too close for comfort! How can the redshift be so high if the quasar is so close?

These problems- and others- could potentially have been resolved by Dr. Hartnett’s new creationist cosmology. His theory is based on Dr. Moshe Carmeli’s work on cosmological relativity. This theory is an expansion of Albert Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity. The difference between Einstein’s relativity and Carmeli’s relativity is that in Carmeli’s equations, cosmic time (t) replaces velocity (v) as the critical quantity, and observed time (13.7 billion years) replaces the speed of light (c) as a constant. You’ll have to go to the link above on cosmological relativity to see some of the equations, however, here’s the basic idea. Carmeli realized that it is possible that the galaxies aren’t merely moving away from us, but that space itself was moving away from us and the galaxies were essentially along for the ride. Carmeli’s equations treat the velocity of this expansion as another dimension of the cosmos. For him, the three dimensions of space, as well as time and velocity, are all dimensions that have to be taken into account when dealing with cosmological origins- 5D. In his equations, there is no need for dark energy or dark matter; this “stretching” of space would account for galactic mass and motion. His book includes a number of appendices explaining his equations in detail, but I’ve just decided to explain in practical terms what Hartnett and Carmeli are describing. This explanation will take a few posts to cover, but I think the possibility of a Creationist cosmology that resolves the problems with Big Bang cosmology and respects the Biblical Genesis narrative will be well worth the wait!

The New Atheists would have us believe that Religion and Science are at odds with each other. Why? Well, that’s a complicated question. Christopher Hitchen believes that religion is really about power, and the currency of life is knowledge. Richard Dawkins basically agrees, but he seems to think that religion is about reveling in mystery, not power. “Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious,” he writes. (The God Delusion, 126) Hitchens makes his feelings quite clear when he says that medicine only had a chance to advance after “the priests had been elbowed aside.” (God is not Great, 90) Ironically, Hitchens goes on to extol the glories of Louis Pasteur’s medical research with no mention of the fact that Pasteur was a devout Catholic!

Strangely, empirical sciences did not develop in other societies that should have encouraged them. China had a well-developed society, India was a strong philosophical center, and Japan excelled in craftmanship. Why did they not develop an understanding of empirical knowledge? It was in the Christian West that developed empirical science, because the Christian worldview expects that the outside world would be understandable and orderly because it was the handiwork of the Creator. Under Christianity, science flourishes. As the West turns from Christianity, science will cease to flourish. After all, only naturalistic worldviews require scientists to fabricate myths like dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter and dark energy only need to exist if the Big Bang actually occurred. Creationist cosmologies explain the universe without the need for these virtually unprovable theories.

To the point, though. Christianity supports science; it does not inhibit it. Though I’m not a Catholic, the Vatican has done more to support science (especially astronomy) financially over the past six centuries or so than any other institution. As Christianity has traditionally supported the Arts, so it has also supported the sciences. Hitchens and Dawkins seem willfully ignorant of the scientists who were also Christians throughout history. Newton, Pasteur, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Faraday, Bernard, and Heisenberg were all Christians, and the list doesn’t stop there. Apparently they found no conflict between faith and science.

You see, when it comes down to it, faith and science are not opposites nor are they in tension with each other. They are different tools for different jobs. Science does not hold a monopoly on knowledge. Religion merely deals with a completely different form of knowledge. I can know that God is in His Heaven and all is right with the world just as surely as I know empirically that the laws of gravity are still in effect. Philosophy also offers a different sort of knowledge that is neither wholly scientific nor wholly religious. Just as I wouldn’t use a hammer to play a bass drum, science is not able to tell us why we are here or if God exists. It’s the wrong tool for the job. I’m not talking about “non-overlapping magisteria” here. I’m talking about using a tool where it is beneficial. When science is beneficial, use it, and don’t let it be hindered. When religion is beneficial (as it most certainly is when that religion is Christianity), then don’t keep it from the public sphere. Politics, law, education, business, and the home could benefit from Christianity’s influence if anti-religious bigots would simply get out of the way. In this way, the tools will complement each other. After all, how would the bass drum be fashioned if the hammer hadn’t been there first?

As confident as the so-called New Atheists are that God does not exist, you would have thought that science had disproven His existence. In fact, they try to whittle God down to a manageable size by- instead of dealing with Him as a Person- label Him as the “God Hypothesis.” Hypotheses are easy to dismiss. God isn’t.

Richard Dawkins is my favorite of the New Atheists because he is quite reckless at this. Consider his book The God Delusion. Dawkins is a scientist, yet he writes a book on religion and pretends that it is science. In it he writes: “The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is univocally a scientific question.” So,  of course, because Dawkins is a materialist, Dawkins rules out all non-material existence or personhood. Therefore, in The Wonderful World of Dawkins, God must obey all laws of physics. You would have thought Dawkins were talking about gravity!

In the end, Dawkins decides that God is not a probable Being. I found this to be a bit odd, since Dawkins’ probability and statistics assumed that God was a contingent Being in a universe that forces Him (HIM!) to conform to its unalterable laws. Christianity, on the other hand, proclaims the existence of a God that is necessary, not contingent. Furthermore, probability deals more with the possibility that an event will occur. It measures the ratio of actual occurences and possible occurences of an event. God doesn’t “happen.” He is (hence the name “I AM.”) Dawkins and Christians still aren’t talking about the same Person!

“Religion kills,” says Christopher Hitchens. In fact, he writes a whole chapter on that topic in his book. Which religion, Mr. Hitchens? True, Islam has been a bloodbath since it was invented, but there are plenty of religions out there that are much less violent. Now, obviously, I’m here to defend Christianity more than anything else, but let’s think about this. How often do you hear on the news that someone killed someone else for religious reasons? “Arminians shoot Calvinist. Must have been his time.” “Southern Baptists in church bus plow over family at Disney World. Claim they were trying to reinforce yet another boycott.” “Catholic priests drown Lutheran in holy water.” It just doesn’t happen.

Christianity doesn’t condone violence. It condones self-defense and national defense, but not crimes of passion. And that’s what it all boils down to, doesn’t it? Passion. People are passionate about their revenge or pride or lust or rage or materialism. They cross lines at the urging of that passion. Christianity isn’t immune to the passions of humans. Sometimes people do try to take by force what God would have us do by His Spirit. The Bible doesn’t condone such actions, nor does God say that He will reward them.

More often than not, religion is used to reinforce some passionate bias, such as race. Just because religion can be used as a tool in the hands of evil or foolish men doesn’t mean that religion itself is the problem. If that were the case, fields such as medicine or science would have a rough time. How many people died throughout history due to crackpot ideas about health and disease? How many have died because science has given us instruments of war? It seems to me that if we applied Hitchens’ litmus test throughout history in an equal way, every scientist and doctor ought to be made to publicly apologize for the sins of their forebears. After all, it isn’t religion alone that is bloody…

That’s what Richard Dawkins says. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and check out his article on his personal website. Don’t worry, I’ll still be here when you’re finished. One quick word of advice before you go, though. You might want to make sure you’ve taken your heart meds before you read the whole thing. He’s got quite a few things to say about those of us from the Bible belt. Then there’s Sam Harris in his Letter to a Christian Nation, where he writes: “Our country now appears, as at no other time in her history, like a lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant.” Do us a favor, Sam. Don’t play it again.

It’s funny that while our squeaking atheist wheels scream for more grease, they are blind to the fact that no one has the corner market on idiots. Just search for atheists on Youtube. Dumb ones are a dime a dozen. That, by the way, is true of just about every cause or faith. People are people. Some are uneducated or lack common sense. It happens.

But, rather than focus on pandemic stupidity, I’d rather focus on the topic of intelligence. There are intelligent people in every walk of life. There are intelligent scientists, historians, teachers, pastors, writers, doctors, and homemakers. I would honestly take an honest, hardworking man or woman over a self-important “intellectual” any day. And another thing: there have been Christians from practically every walk of life. I don’t see how Christianity is antagonistic to intelligence, since plenty of people were both intelligent and men and women of faith.

I leave you with a quote by Alexis de Tocqueville, who said: “Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” de Tocqueville was smarter than most folks today, but he saw the link between liberty, morality, and faith.

Last week, I wrote about the reasons why so many men refuse to go to church. I want to follow up on that train of thought a little bit and talk about the relationship between faith in God and having a father-figure. Dr. Paul C. Vitz of New York University’s Psychology department published an article in 1999 that appears to also be the subject of an upcoming book entitled Defective Fathers: Psychological Origins of Atheism.

In his study, Vitz noted that many famous atheists had been neglected or abused by their fathers. Some fathers had simply been not nearly so strong in character or personality as they desired. Consider the words of H. G. Wells, who said: “My father was always at cricket, and I think [mum] realised more and more acutely as the years dragged on without material alleviation, that Our Father and Our Lord, on whom to begin with she had perhaps counted unduly, were also away – playing perhaps at their own sort of cricket in some remote quarter of the starry universe.” By studying atheists and a group of Christians, Vitz theorized that the atheists’ disdain for God began as a disdain for their own human fathers.

In contrast, Vitz found that Christians tend to be considered psychologically healthy. This flies in the face of Christopher Hitchens’ book, which states quite plainly that religion is grounded on wish-thinking. To Hitchens, God exists in believers’ mind simply because we want Him to be there. Our deepest longings for something- Someone- beyond ourselves cause us to create a God to believe in.

Hitchens proves nothing by noting that we long for God. There are, after all, many people who have  a good reason to long for God to be absent from the picture. They may not want Him to tell them what to do. They may not like taking ultimate responsibility. I’d say an atheist has at least as strong of a reason to disbelieve in God as a believer has for belief in God. Inner motivation has nothing to do with proving or disproving God’s existence.

No doubt, there is something within most people that does long for the Eternal. That longing doesn’t mean I fabricated God to be the object of that longing. I longed for food today, and I enjoyed some beef stew for lunch and some marinated chicken for dinner that I’m quite sure were real. I longed for fellowship, and I was able to enjoy talking to friends and family. But you may say to me: “Yes, but I can perceive the food and the friends with my senses. Those aren’t the same as God, who cannot be seen.” That’s true, but think about it a little more. Before I knew Him, I knew that I longed for something. It was only after I came to faith that I knew what my longings were all about. A child may long for food or companionship but not know what to call it. Also, hunger and loneliness are concepts, not objects to be perceived, just like a longing for the Eternal God. The desire is intangible, but the object is not.

PS- Apologetics 315 has a link to a free MP3 of Vitz if you care to listen…

This Father’s Day article is going to address a huge problem in the American Church: the lack of male attendance in congregations. I’ve read a number of articles and even a book or two on the subject, and I’ll be pointing you in the direction of a few good online articles and books if you’re interested.

A while ago, I wrote an article entitled “Jesus Isn’t ‘Nice’” about how we have altered our perception of God Himself to fit our culture. Because we have made that change in perception about God, we have feminized (I prefer the term “neutered”, since it brings to mind the stallion and the gelding) churches and our portrayal of the “godly man.” The effect on our congregations has been profound.

Consider the following statistics listed on the “Church for Men” website:

• American churches on average display an incredible gender gap- 69% women and 31% men. That translates to about 13 million more women attending than men.
• 1 in 4 “churched” women will attend the Sunday service without their husbands, while 80% of attendees at the midweek services are women.
• Over 70% of boys raised in church will drop out by the end of their college years.
• At Christian colleges, the ratio of female to male students is 2 to 1.

These statistics, verified from a number of researchers, are astounding to me. Besides the obvious problem of men abandoning or rejecting faith in Christ, think of the incredible symbiotic relationship between men and Christianity!

• Churchgoers are more likely to be satisfied with their lives, marriages, and themselves.
• Churchgoers are less likely to remain poor or depressed.
• Men who attend church are more likely to be engaged with their spouse and children, and teens with churchgoing fathers are more likely to admire and enjoy spending time with their fathers.
• The presence of men in a congregation is statistically related to whether or not the church grows or declines.

Who is being reached by the Gospel today? Women. There are women’s conferences, fellowships, Bible studies, and retreats. That’s fantastic and needed. Men, on the other hand, are fortunate if they get a monthly pancake breakfast and an annual retreat. The early church was a magnet for men seeking for something, but today’s church repels men.

The question must be asked: Why are men abandoning church in record numbers if many men believe in God, claim to be saved, and want to be good husbands and fathers? The answer is quite simple: churches have followed the trend of American culture and have become more effeminate. The average church, quite frankly, has been neutered.

Paul Coughlin at Crosswalk.com says that men have been encouraged to be harmless as doves, but not to become wise (shrewd) like serpents. Wisdom and cunning are extremely important, but men are told that shrewdness in everything from political and religious arguments to business deals is bad. That goes right along with the feminizing of Jesus and preaching “feel good” sermons. Sermons today are often geared to deal with supposedly practical issues and not deeper, more penetrating, or more intellectual issues. What’s so terrible to me about that last point is that I think this is insulting to many women as well as men!

Coughlin also points out that preaching and teaching today commonly instructs men to avoid anger. The problem is that anger is the primary emotional response for many men and some women! It’s a simple reaction that can’t be controlled! Of course, how anger is dealt with can be controlled, but anger is to some men what crying is to some women. Can you imagine a pastor telling the women in his congregation to not cry when they get upset? No one would do such a thing, because everyone knows that crying is sometimes a natural response to situations for some people. The same thing stands for anger. Good luck building a biblical case against anger, by the way. You’ll find the Bible speaks often of controlling and dealing with anger, being angry and not sinning, God’s own anger, and being meek. What you won’t find is an instruction to never be angry. You also won’t find God banning masculine qualities.

Christian men are encouraged to be “nice” in the name of Christian testimony. Sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade though. To be sure, there are times when testimony is important, but that isn’t all the time. Imagine telling Moses, David, Elijah, Daniel, John the Baptist,  and Paul to back down in the name of testimony. Personally, I’d like to see more men in church that exhibit more of the qualities of these godly men. If the righteous are bold as lions (Proverbs 28), then our churches are sadly lacking in righteous men.

Churches today are extremely relational, and seek to meet emotional needs, according to writer Nancy Pearcey. They deal with sharing feelings, soft singing, and comforting members. Praise songs describe Jesus almost as a lover, while songs such as “Onward Christian Soldiers” are avoided at all cost. As Pearcey says: “So, as long as Christianity appeals to the emotional, therapeutic, interpersonal, relational areas, it’s not going to appeal to men as much as to women.” Where is the church triumphant in all of this?

The answer is that the church today isn’t too concerned with being triumphant. As my fellow blogger Wintery Knight observes:

“All of the outward facing disciplines within Christianity, such as apologetics, theology, ethics, etc. are de-emphasized, censored or resisted in feminized churches. There is no place for rationality, moral judgments and boundaries, debates and disagreement, confrontations and persuasion, or other manly Christian practices.

Christianity is evangelical, and evangelism takes study and preparation, which culminates in confrontations and discussions. The object of these discussions is not to win the argument. It is to win the person over to your side. So facts and arguments play a huge role in  evangelism, but there has to be gentleness too, if you actually want to win. And this is what Christian men are supposed to do.”

Men seem to enjoy theology, philosophy, politics, ethics, and science more than women do. They love debate, contest, competition, adventure, challenges, danger, risk, and achievement in a unique way. It isn’t that these are “men’s areas”, but there is something different in how men are wired that gives them an affinity for these things. As John Eldridge’s book Wild at Heart observes, our self-worth is intimately connected to these things. Men don’t feel complete unless they are accomplishing, building, and standing on something larger than themselves. As Christian comedian Jeff Allen has said, men need something worth dying for to make them truly come to life.

So what’s a church to do? Jesus founded His church on men, and it only seems fitting that churches can only thrive when there is a core of both men and women willing to serve Him. Remember that the pastor of any given church probably isn’t to blame for who attends- or doesn’t attend- his church. The congregation wields great control in this area, so it is up to us- the laity- to make the changes. Christianity must be presented as more than the solution to fears and failures if men are to return to church. It must be presented as the wild journey, the incredible quest, the “Pilgrim’s Progress” that it is. There must be more preaching and teaching on being “a soldier of the cross”, of putting on the armor of light, and of rejecting spiritual milk for meat. Only then will there be a resurgence of men to the church pew.

For more information check out Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow and The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity by Leon J. Podles. Personal enrichment books on the same topic are The Silence of Adam by Larry Crabb and No More Christian Nice Guy by Paul T. Coughlin.

As I said in a previous post, I’ve been reading a fascinating book by Hugh Ross entitled Why the Universe is the Way it Is. Dr. Ross has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is the president of Reason to Believe ministries. He’s spoken at over 300 colleges and universities. While Ross’ book is by no means exhaustive, it does an excellent job of helping the reader realize how very, very, VERY unlikely it is for us to exist without a Creator. A disclaimer: Ross does seem to believe in some form of theistic evolution, at least to the extent that God allowed the universe to evolve and then stepped in to make humans several billion years later. I prefer to believe that God either created the entire universe with the appearance of age (since He did so with Adam and the rest of life on earth) or that- thanks to general relativity- God’s act of creation actually did some really cool things to the flow of time. I tend to go with the second option, but I’m not going to explain the whole theory in detail at this time. I also see some value in studying whether or not light itself could be slowing down.

Below you’ll see a few reasons why the earth is not only uniquely designed to support life, but also to allow mankind to view the heavens. God wanted us to discover His universe.

• For starters, there’s the atmosphere. It’s clear. If you read up on the atmospheres of other planets, you’ll notice that very few of them have clear atmospheres. If it weren’t clear but still breathable, we’d have no idea what space looked like.
• Then there’s the moon.Where else in the solar system can you witness a complete solar eclipse? Where else can the sun’s corona become viewable to scientists thanks to a perfectly round moon that regularly eclipses the sun? Earth is the only place this is possible because the distance between earth, moon, and sun, as well as the size and shape of all three bodies, is exactly right!
• In spite of how bright it appears, the moon actually only reflects 7% of the light the sun’s light. By comparison, the earth reflects 39%, Jupiter and Saturn’s moons reflect 60-90%, and Neptune reflects 73%. If the moon reflected more light than it did, we would have a hard time seeing much of the universe for most of the year!
• In a similar vein, the other planets are just so positioned that they don’t hinder our view of the night sky. Mars only comes close to earth once every 26 months and reflects only 15% of its light. Venus reflects 65% of its light, but because it lies between the earth and sun, we see very little of its light. If Mars and Venus were switched, Venus would be ten times brighter all night long, and we’d have a hard time seeing anything near its position in the sky. Switch Mars with Jupiter, and viewing distant galaxies would be impossible.
• The dust cloud from the galactic spiral arms that- as  I mentioned in the previous post- shield our solar system from lethal levels of radiation also block out much of the light from the rest of the galaxy. Other galaxies are made visible to us.
• Nebulae in our galaxy are relatively dark and very far from us. Things could have been very different. The Orion Nebula (located in Orion’s sword) is the closest “star nursery” to earth, and it blocks out a patch of sky the diameter of two moons. If, however, the Orion Nebula were switched, say, with the Tarantula Nebula, a full quarter of the night sky would be blocked out, and the nebula would be bright enough to cast shadows! We’d have a hard time seeing much in that case!
• Our galactic cluster is small and spread out, ensuring our ability to see many light years beyond our own galaxy.

As I hope you’re beginning to see, God not only cared about our ability to survive on our home planet, but He also wanted us to be able to witness creation. Of course, if you don’t believe that God made it all, all you’re left to say is: “What a wonder that we dwell in a galaxy in which we can see all its wonders!” But who believes in us getting this lucky?