Apprentice Owl Apologetics

                Another one that I have seen argued a lot, Christians should have no problems with socialism because Jesus was a socialist and the early church held these values. But upon further examination, does this argument hold water? What I would like to do here is to look at the textbook definition of socialism, and see if there is scriptural evidence for this train of economic thought versus anything else.                 So if I look up the definition of Socialism on the merriam-webster site, the first definition is this: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means or production and distribution of goods. So we are looking at governmental ownership of everything, with no private ownership as in capitalism. This would also necessitate administration by individuals. This would also ...

                All of what I hear in the media is how this is racist or the other thing is racist. What I hear a lot is how the right, or the “Christian right” is the most racist of all and how they are all the KKK. Now I hear the same for the left, and there are Christian friends of mine on the left side of the aisle, but recent events, movies, and what we have been talking about in church and Sunday school had me asking “Is Christianity inherently racist?” I would like to explore a couple of stories in scripture and show that not only is Christianity not racist, but is one of the most inclusive religions out there.                 Firstly, I would like to look to the story of Ruth. Ruth was a Moabite that married one of Naomi’s sons, whom were Israelites. Naomi’s husband, Ruth’s husband, and Orpah’s husband all passed away relatively close to one another, leaving 3 wi...

                All around the world, eyes were on the United States as we observed the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45 th president of this great country. Love him, hate him, indifferent to him, it has happened and if you claim to be an American and live within the borders, he is your president. For us Christians who are saying that he isn’t, I would like to refer you to the passage in Romans that I reference in my post about gun ownership and the 2 nd Amendment (Romans 13). Today, however, I am not going to be talking directly about our president, but instead about an event that happened this weekend in protest to his inauguration and the supposed rights that he is about to take away. I will be talking about the Women’s march that took place in many cities across the nation. I want to address a few of the points that I assume that they wanted to get across in this rather murky event, as well as respond with a few points that we as C...

                What I have seen on both sides of the aisle is for people to legislate religion in the United States, or the lack thereof. I have seen people who want to create a theocracy for Christianity or Islam (which has been done and we see how well that works), or banish religion entirely. All of these views are flawed in my opinion. What I would like to do is to explore the idea of a theocracy, and what it would mean to try and legislate Christian values.                 A theocracy would mean that the church is practically in charge of the government. The Webster’s definition also includes God or deities as the head of government, which Israel had at first, but they went the way of judges and eventually kings. At first thought, one might now think that it wouldn’t be that bad, but I can see some problems, even as a Christian myself. This theocracy would have to ...

                Recently, I have had a discussion with an atheist over a meme that he posted. He decided to use two verses from Genesis (30: 37-39) as an argument for how the bible allegedly describes how animals got their stripes versus the scientific explanation of the development of stripes over time. There is a problem with this interpretation. If one looks at this whole story, we see a wager that Jacob had with Laban, his father in law. Laban had cheated Jacob twice, and Jacob wanted to leave with his family so he asked for his wages in striped and speckled and colored goats and sheep. Laban sorted out the sheep and goats so that none of these were in Jacob’s flocks. Jacob tied strips of poplar to the trees where his herds were breeding. All of the offspring born were such that they satisfied the wager and Jacob could keep them. The glaring problem in the atheist argument here about the origin of striped animals is that they already existed ...

                I recently wrote a post encouraging Christians who make mistakes because I and friends I know have tendencies to let the enemy steal our joy in our salvation by having us focus on our mistakes. What I want to write about today are those who don’t yet believe in the saving grace of Jesus but are on the fence about it. I want to try and answer a few of your questions that may be keeping you on the proverbial fence.                 I have had a few friends who have come to me with questions and concerns about the Christian faith, and the 3 common questions are what I am going to frame my post around. The first question I usually get is “isn’t the church full of hypocrites?” This question is meant to torpedo the idea that Christians are perfect beings once saved. The problem is that they are already right, Christians aren’t perfect; we are only forgiven ...

                This one may be most of an extremely odd, or extremely basic question, but I have spent 2 weeks working on a frustrating work project and this hit me at bible study. People have different ideas about Christianity, even within the religion itself (see my thoughts on prosperity gospel). What do I personally think of Christianity?                 To start, I want to give a quick testimony over how I got here. I was born and raised in a church, so when I was young I accepted much of what I was taught, but thought to ask questions that my parents answered for me. When I was in college I was seriously challenged by other worldviews for the first time. I was depressed for a while thinking about if I had been brought up wrong or that there wasn’t anything after death. My father helped me through the depression and both of my parents supplied me with my first...