Apprentice Owl Apologetics

                 This isn’t necessarily apologetics related, but something I wanted to get written down. A few days ago, I had a dream that I was giving a sermon to what appeared to be a high school pep rally. I don’t think this meant I will be giving this sermon, or that even I should be a preacher, but I what I recall is the content of what I was talking about.                 I was talking to the students, and giving an analogy about Christ and his salvation. Imagine we had to run a ridiculous marathon, say New York to Los Angeles in one sitting. There is no way we could do this without dropping dead (the origin of the marathon story came to mind, where the Greek messenger dropped dead after running   back to Athens to report their victory). With this in mind Jesus came and offered us his car to make this trip instead, so we could make it because Jesus is doing the race for us, and carrying us with him.                 A much shorter post than usual, but I wanted to post this

                 If anyone follows me on social media, you probably notice that I fall on the conservative/libertarian spectrum of politics.   I do want to say that I can be persuaded depending on this issue to look and possibly accept other sides, but I want to present my main reason as to why I think one should be careful if they are a Jew/Christian, and think that we should be giving our power to the governing bodies because they think we should be like everyone else.                 In the Old Testament, the Israelites also wanted to be like everyone else, so they asked God to elect a king to rule over them (read 1 Samuel 8) because they saw that every other nation around them was ruled by a king. Now, many of these nations were deemed to be wicked, and ceremonial laws were put in place by God to help separate Israel from the rest of the world, because God wanted to show the world His chosen people and what benefits a relationship with Him looks like. Instead, the Israelites sh

                 Recently, a gay, Muslim, drag queen (yes you read that right) was featured by buzz feed. In the interview, this person claimed that quantum mechanics helped them to understand that gender was on a spectrum and it helped them come to grips with their identity. InspiringPhilosophy had a Facebook post describing this and had a short snippet on how this reasoning is flawed. I have also made comments like this when I talk about science, faith, and morality regarding various specific topics, such as whether or not homosexuality is genetic. What I would like to do today is to bring these threads together and expound a bit on this topic of morality as we understand it as Christians vs. what we observe in nature.                 We can see all sorts of things in nature that we can say are morally good, like mice supporting each other through a maze. We can also see things in nature that we as humans would say are morally bad, such as male sharks or dolphins raping their res

                 I’m sure the current political climate in the United States needs no introduction, so I can dive straight in to this post. Should Christians get involved in politics, and should we be taking sides with each political controversy? This falls into a previous post of mine, describing the role of emotions in truth arguments. What I would like to do is have a short post describing my thoughts on the current political process, and why Christians should be interested in truth over politics.                 I think as Christians, truth and justice should matter over politics. I will admit that neither left, right, or moderate has a monopoly on these. I think that we should be looking at each political issue on a case by case basis, and deciding what is best there, regardless of what side of the aisle it falls on. I think what matters is whether or not our answer aligns with scripture. For instance, environmentalist political policies are mostly considered left-wing by cons

                In the era of #metoo and social media conflicts causing people to lose their jobs or job opportunities (see the story about the NASA intern who cussed out her boss and was fired), one wonders if people are going about interpersonal communication the wrong way. I typically hear pastors and fellow Christians saying to cast our worries and problems onto Jesus, and that will take care of it. I think this view is slightly flawed. Indeed, we should cast our worries onto Jesus, but problems will still come our way, and how we deal with them is part of our testimony of the transformation of Christ in our lives to the rest of the world. However, my views mean nothing, this all comes to scripture and what God has told us, so what I want to do is to show where God has given us an example of interpersonal communication handled in a godly manner. For this, I want to break down a few of my one-sentence personal thoughts                 Be the bigger person, even when you have t

                 I have been seeing a lot of people argue the morality of certain actions done by the President, or by various people in leadership. I’m sure these types of debates are nothing new, as the debate of what is good and what is evil have been a part of human identity since our creation. One of the biggest questions surrounding the topic of morality is this: “Is morality a human construct, or does morality transcend the human perspective?” What I want to present today is the moral argument for God’s existence, the concept of objective moral values pointing to God, and why even the atheist requires objective morals to make any claims on the validity/invalidity of any other worldview.                 To introduce the moral argument for God’s existence, there are a few ideas that we must first consider. The first is the idea that God is morally perfect and unchanging in these morals. The second is that we derive our morals from God, not society, as our standards. These God

                I have been blessed with a job where I am encouraged to practice my faith (so long as it isn’t heretical). During all this week I have been in meetings as to how we integrate our faith into our work. What I want to do is write a quick little thought piece about what I learned and how this could be applied in a general sense.                 Firstly, we must recognize the authority of God through all of creation, even our jobs. I think there is a pressure in this “post-Christian” era to compartmentalize our faiths into a private room where it is only us and God. However, this goes against our Great Commission handed to us by Jesus, to go into all the world and make disciples. Assuming a full time job, we spend a little less than a third of our adult lives at work, which makes it prime time disciple making season! We should at least recognize that we have the opportunity to disciple our coworkers if they aren’t Christians, and be able to be encouragers to our Christ

I saw a video during my Sunday service about the floods of people that are coming to church for Easter or Christmas, maybe they only come once a year, or are interested in what all the hubbub is about. For those interested, it follows that they might have questions. Now, I have written plenty about scholarly questions to Christian faith, but does this mean that everyone should have these answers? Not necessarily, because many times the questions are not scholarly, but emotional. We should be able to answer these as well. These types of questions will be case by case, so a systematic rulebook of answers cannot be written here. However, the Bible does give us some guidelines in how to talk to one another. We are called in Colossians to let our speech be seasoned with salt and grace (Colossians 4:6). In 1 Peter 3:15, we are commanded to deliver our answers with gentleness and respect. These are general sweeping statements on how we are to conduct our speech, so let’s apply them to our

                 This is my 100 th post, and after a little over 5 years of this ministry has taught me one thing, that there will always be questions to answer. As long as the world remains as it is, people will possess a curiosity that drives them to seek out the truth of the world. What I have found is that certain people have issues with religion and Christianity because they have “too many unanswered questions”. What I want to show today is that questions are not a bad thing, and that you need to eventually come to faith as a means of getting certain questions answered.                 What I want to do first is to show that this attitude of “too many questions” is hypocritical, especially if you are someone who trusts in the scientific process. Science is all about answering questions, but there are plenty of areas that we have little information about (Ph.D. comics has actually written a book on specific topics in this area). Bringing it closer to home, as I do research in

                 I am self-taught in many aspects of philosophy, or I rely on what I have learned by reading other’s work. One philosophical tool that I have found very interesting was Occam’s Razor. For those who aren’t familiar, Occam’s Razor basically states that the simplest explanation is the most likely explanation. So, does this tool provide a case for Theism/Christianity? It all depends on what we have as evidence to support our conclusion and what we decide to be the simplest explanation. What I want to do today is to show that God is the simplest explanation for the universe, and that the resurrection of Jesus is the simplest explanation as to why the disciples died for their beliefs and that the early church exploded because of that truth.                 As far as God being the uncaused first cause of the universe, the creator and sustainer of all we are and know, and the simplest explanation of all of this, I have a small case of evidence to present. It is more reasona

                 This is meant to be a follow up to my last post, which discusses freedom under Christ. Now I want to flip the discussion. Do the moral laws that God passed down to us that Jews and Christians follow stifle our lives? Is God a cosmic killjoy? As a Christian, my obvious answer is no, and I would like to take this post and try to explain why.                 There are plenty of people that will object to Christians as prudes for not “having fun” in general, and they will probably have some examples in mind, even “progressive Christians”. A lot of people will mock Christians for not partaking in all of what today’s society has to offer, in drinking, sexual promiscuity, moral relativity, and so on. The problem is that they have this idea of a God who loves us and wants to be our friend by letting us do what we want. This view has been created by Satan, distorting the message that God loves us into something that makes people think that God is subservient to our will. Go

                Plenty of people talk about the New Year as a chance to start over, and plenty of people take those chances to pursue various methods of improving their lives. My wife and I are doing the Whole 30 diet to start off the year. However, plenty of people will have fallen off the tracks by Valentine’s Day. In Christianity, we have another chance with Christ, by accepting his gift of salvation to free us from the chains of sin and to restore us to fellowship with God. The New Testament contains quite a few passages on the new life we have been given through Christ, and what we should do with this newfound freedom from sin and the condemnation of the law. What I want to do here is to show what scripture says about freedom, and how it was bought with a price.                 We see in Romans 3:23 that all men are guilty of sin, that we all have transgressed the law of God. We also see in James 2:10 that if we keep the whole law, yet stumble in one aspect, that we are guilty