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Review: The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr

September 21, 2023 by EnnisP Leave a Comment

Truth, like food, is better received when better prepared.

A Clanging Cymbal Expresses Adamance
Not Meaning

Before the Scopes trial, which ultimately was a debate between creation and evolution, William Jennings Bryan famously said, “if evolution wins, Christianity goes.”

He, like many other absolutists before and after him, was wrong. In the end, neither side could claim victory and Christianity hasn’t gone anywhere.

But it makes you wonder. How many other tightly held biblical ideas could be moderated without destroying faith and the Christian community?

The truth is Faith isn’t easily obliterated and science is not static. I believe in a young earth and a seven day creation but I know I can’t prove those ideas any more than evolutionists can conclusively prove the 13.7 billion year history they claim for the earth.

When conflicts like this occur, the only reasonable response is to respect the rights of others to think differently, share in the discussion and keep digging for facts. Both sides keep digging but the sharing part resembles a barrage of artillery shells flying both ways. Everyone is firing and ducking.

Instead of clarifying, the discussion separates and divides. Neither side seems to understand that ideas aren’t weapons and would be better used to stimulate thought than cause injury.

I understand how uncomfortable some ideas can be but I still find it difficult to refuse the discussion.

Before you walk away, remember that religionists are often the unreasonable party. They don’t argue, they dismiss. Religious conservatives, like the Catholics who put Galileo under house arrest for teaching the earth revolved around the sun, accept only compliance and obedience. Arguments, any arguments, are viewed as an offense against God and there is a long history of burning differing ideas at the stake.

I’m saying that as one who was raised in religious conservatism. I learned the doctrines well and zealously complied but compelling ideas should never be ignored even if those ideas seem to rub faith the wrong way.

We should never be satisfied to ignore those ideas and always be open new arguments and perspectives.

The question is where do you find those arguments. [Read more…] about Review: The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr

Filed Under: Bible Study, Book Reviews, Philosophy

9 Reasons You Won’t Find God At The Center Of Government

July 21, 2023 by EnnisP Leave a Comment

What's the difference between atheistic totalitarianism and theistic totalitarianism.

Any Kind of Totalitarianism Is Abusive
And Democracy Is The Correction

There’s really no difference between Atheistic and Theistic totalitarianism but before we discuss the two, a clarification.

The question here is not does God have a place in government but exactly how does He fit in.

  • Is He completely uninvolved as if He didn’t exist?
  • Is He in complete control imposing His rule and will on every aspect of human life?
  • Or does He provide the necessary information to enable us to figure things out as we go.

Those are the only three options, two of which are totalitarian. [Read more…] about 9 Reasons You Won’t Find God At The Center Of Government

Filed Under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Law

Book Release: Calvinism’s Fallacies by Ennis Pepper

March 13, 2023 by EnnisP Leave a Comment

Calvinism's Fallacies: Why The Gospel Applies To Anyone, Anywhere, At Any Time, Under Any Circumstance

Calvinism’s Fallacies: Why The Gospel Applies To Anyone, Anywhere, At Any Time, Under Any Circumstance

Calvinim’s Fallacies is available for free through Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program but the ebook version can also be purchased at Amazon inexpensively for just $2.99.

This book is not so much about Calvinism as it is a response to Calvinism. Since Calvinism grates against fairness and logic to begin with and has proven very difficult to clearly and rationally explain, it wouldn’t make sense to write another book on that topic.

To be sure, there are plenty of books attempting to explain or teach Calvinism and if you read them all, you would still be in the dark. Apart from the terminology (called, chosen, elect, predestined, grace, etc.), which everyone accepts, calvinists and non-calvinists alike, there is no thread of agreement. The acronym, TULIP, is a good example.

The acronym represents the five points of Calvinistic teaching, which on the surface seems to focus the thinking and coalesce disparate ideas, but when you read through explanations for each point, you find a range of variations as broad as the Gulf of Mexico and the reasoning for the differences, if you could call it that, as long as the Mississippi.

The intention here is not to explain Calvinism but rather to point out an entirely different perspective on terms like elect and predestined. There are, of course, other books that have attempted this also but those voices are drowned out by all the celebrating over being specially chosen while everyone else goes to hell. Hence, one more book to add a different perspective to a well worn discussion. Hopefully you find it clear and concise enough to be helpful.

This book only shares a few anecdotes on the historical effect of Calvinism but an extensive study on that topic could settle the question for most people. The interesting truth is Calvinism wasn’t institutionalized till John Calvin gave it academic weight in His Institutions. It didn’t take strong hold till it settled into the American northeast with the Pilgrims. Maybe that will be the next book.

Filed Under: Bible Study, Evangelism, Salvation

Abortion: It’s Not What You Think

December 2, 2022 by EnnisP Leave a Comment

God used no less power in the creation of an amoeba as He did in the creation of a fetus.

Faith Is Important
But Only If It Is An Option
And Not An Imposition

After my wife and I retired, we did what many retirees do which is whatever we wanted. We went where we wanted, whenever we wanted and we sat around watching TV snacking as we pleased. It was great at first but the downside became apparent rather quickly.

Not having a schedule or a plan got old and we couldn’t figure out how to get paid sitting on the couch so we decided to look around for some temp work.

The casual lifestyle also caused another problem. All the snacking created a need for a new wardrobe.

About the time we were coming to our senses, my wife noticed an ad for a local charity and it seemed like a fit. It was seasonal work and it paid a little so it met our criteria. We weren’t looking to be consumed by a job so this was a way to work a bit, get paid a little, and in this case, it was a way to give back too.

We had to fill out applications which is fairly standard. What we didn’t know is the application also involved a level of scrutiny not usually associated with part-time, casual, no-skills-required work.

It wasn’t long after submitting the paperwork before we got a screening call. It was a surprise. There was no advance notice of a call and the caller abruptly hit us with two questions we didn’t see coming:

One, do you believe life begins in the womb?

And two, do you believe the Bible teaches marriage is only heterosexual?

The wording was a little different but that was the essence and it really bothered me. The questions were offered in the spirit of interrogation like the caller was daring me to disagree.

But aside from being irritated, I actually had a question of my own (more than one) which I didn’t share in the phone conversation but have thought about ever since.

  • In what way do these questions qualify anyone to do charity work?
  • If the people who do charitable work must qualify in this way are the people who receive the charity required to think this too?
  • If so, must they agree before receiving charity? Are material goods dangled scintillatingly before the eyes of the needy till they comply?

In other words, is charity provided to meet genuine human needs or is it used as leverage to force a point of view on unsuspecting but needy people?

This conversation didn’t sit well with me. I’d spent over thirty years doing missionary work in South Africa and had witnessed first-hand religious groups preying on the desperation of very needy people, providing material goods just to maintain social/religious control. That type of charity is neither biblical nor liberating.

Jesus certainly never did anything like that.

The caller and the questions came across a little heavy-handed and my wife and I decided to give the job a miss but we did go through the in-person interview which was the next step. We wanted to put eyes on the people and organization that took this approach. I wasn’t going to just call and say no thanks although I would have been in my right to do so.

This experience also provoked a deeper dive into a bothersome issue.

Abortion

In the past, I had always just gone along with the fundamentalist ideas about abortion and marriage.

Mostly.

I differed on some issues and moderated on others marginally, and had shared a few ideas about those differences with others but when it came to abortion, I had usually acquiesced to popular opinion.

Before anyone becomes too judgmental about the apparent prevarication, consider the fact that religiously, people aren’t given the option to choose freely what they think. Thinking is generally not allowed. Compliance is required. Anything else is heresy.

The phone conversation, as I said, didn’t just irritate me, it motivated me to do a deeper dive and look at the issues more closely. Unfortunately, I can’t say I came up with the absolute answer. In fact, the conclusion I came to was there is no absolute answer and that is important. We can’t just motor on in the same vein unless we can dispel every possible doubt. Uncertainty must be factored into the discussion.

The Real Question

What I realized is we’re actually asking the wrong question. The question we got was “do you believe life begins at conception?” That’s a fair question but it isn’t the right question.

The right question is at what point do you believe the fetus becomes a living soul? Life is one thing. A living soul is another. [Read more…] about Abortion: It’s Not What You Think

Filed Under: Bible Study, Creation, Religion

Biblical Election Has Many Applications

January 22, 2022 by EnnisP Leave a Comment

If you don't do the hard work of becoming the person you need to be, you won't be able to do the thing you're called to do.

Election Is For Service Not Salvation
Part 2 of 3

Part 1 – Calvinism Has No Connection To Election Or Predestination

Part 3 – Biblical Predestination Not Focused On Individuals Or Minutia

Part 1 of this series focused on the many fallacies of Calvinism and there are many. Too many to enumerate in one post.

Calvinism raises so many questions that if you took each to its logical end, you would end up with a book, maybe a set, not just a post.

The previous post was intended to whet the appetite and set the stage for further investigation. The fallacies don’t explain Election or Predestination so the job isn’t done yet but they do reveal the questionable nature of Calvinism and that opens the door to a different approach.

So, what about Election.

Preliminary Thoughts

First, a few preliminary thoughts.

More than any other word, Election has become the anchor for Calvinistic thought. Everything Calvinists teach about any subject in the Bible is tethered to the idea that God selected some for salvation and deselected everyone else.

Calvinists don’t like it when their ideas are framed in those terms and they’ve produced a litany of sophisticated-sounding prose to suggest that isn’t true but when you boil it all down, if any person is not saved and doesn’t get saved before they die, they were deselected.

As we go along, it will become clear why that is the logical inference of Calvinist teachings.

There are several key passages that need to be explained but before we get into those, a few foundational observations are needed first.

Election Is Too Common To Be Special

First of all, a word about the word Elecction.

The word Election is just one word. It isn’t a unique word. It wasn’t specially coined in the Old Testament or New Testament to carry a strange, weird, or unusual meaning.

The word was never intended to become a theological Shibboleth. It’s not even particularly spiritual.

Tees For Everyone

The New Testament writers haven’t said enough in context to impregnate it sufficiently with the idea that God did something before we were born to divide humanity into two groups: the ins and the outs.

The word simply means chosen and it can apply to all kinds of things. Making choices (elections), is very common.

We choose what we wear and eat each day, what we watch on TV, what we read, think, and more.

We choose how punctual we are, how we act under pressure, who we marry, spend time with, vote for, and so on.

People choose careers, places to live, and methods for managing money.

But the choices we make are always qualified or should be. Careless people make random, unqualified choices and suffer badly as a result. Words like thoughtless, irresponsible, negligent, and imprudent describe the random-choice approach to life.

And that is exactly what Calvinists are suggesting about God.

Election Presents Opportunities

Sometimes we make good choices. Sometimes we make bad choices. The good news is after we make bad choices, we can still choose to learn from the experience. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don’t.

Choices shape our lives they don’t define us. [Read more…] about Biblical Election Has Many Applications

Filed Under: Bible Study, God's Sovereignty, Philosophy

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