Craving Answers, Craving God

The modern west holds that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” and that this enlightenment principle of human liberty is “self-evident.” But this deistic idea of God-created principles of freedom which are available to humans without revelation from God (“self-evident”) is founded on the misguided belief that humans are equipped and desire...

We all know people who are good people, and we all know people who are bad people. But does the human race as a whole tend to be one or the other? While the tendency, in our Instagram culture, is to see people as either good guys or bad guys, Christianity insists that humans are both beautiful and good because we’re made to look like God, but we’re also broken and evil as a result of our collectiv...

If God is God then his human creatures shouldn’t be surprised that he isn’t completely comprehensible. So when the Bible says that he is sovereign and does whatever he wants but also that he genuinely engages his people in conversation in prayer and adjusts what he does based on their requests, the argument that this is necessarily a contradiction because we can’t understand how it works is illegi...

The Bible describes God as a God of love, but also frequently describes him angrily judging sins. For many people, Christians as well as non-Christians, these descriptions are very disturbing. If God is a God of love we don’t like to think about him getting angry. But if we reflect on our own relational experiences we know this is not possible. God gets angry precisely because he is a God of love,...

In the Bible Christians are told to not love the world, but we’re also told to bear God’s image, and God describes himself as loving the world. This makes sense if we understand what St. Augustine meant by not loving anything or anyone out of order; in other words, loving what we should love in the right order: God first, our fellow image-bearers next, and his good creation third. So Christians sh...

Christians agree that God created the whole universe, but what does this mean for how humans are to rule over or take care of his environment? The Bible says that God created humans to be his representative on earth, which means we are to take care of the world like he does, with care and love and stewardship, not manipulation and selfishness. So Christians, of all people, should be leading the wa...

The God of the Bible commands his creatures to praise him - to talk and sing about how great he is, but the idea of a God like this who would demand praise and worship from his creatures is seen as incomprehensible and even offensive by many non-believers. Why would the greatest Being in the universe need to be told how great he is? Is he insecure? Is he needy? Why would he use dictatorial powers...

Humility is almost universally admired in the West, and people who are full of themselves are almost universally avoided. But although this value is common, humility is a uniquely Christian virtue. Only if there is a God who created all things and people and transcends his human creatures is the refusal to think of other creatures as less than ourselves wrong. And according to Christianity, becaus...

The Bible describes marriage as two people becoming “one flesh.” This incredible concept is more than just a helpful metaphor - in marriage (and through sex within marriage), God has created a new singular unit out of two separate people. In this way God has designed marriage to make concrete what He himself - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - has experienced from eternity past - absolutely perfect u...

Marriage has always been both beautiful and difficult, and never more than it is now. Our cultural conviction that we as individuals are more important than our relationships butts heads with our desire to experience love and acceptance. But God has created marriage to be a way for couples to experience what it means to find themselves in a mutual, self-sacrificial commitment. And this experience...

Many secular people believe that science has made religion obsolete - that since we now have rational explanations for natural phenomena we no longer need God. This assumes that religion’s job is to explain natural phenomena, but while science’s job is to explain such phenomena, religion’s job is to tell us why such phenomena exists and how to live as relational and moral beings in our physical wo...

The word “sin” is a largely forgotten word. People in our culture find it an oppressive and judgmental word, and so we typically use it ironically or pejoratively. But the idea of a “sin” is one that’s held by all people everywhere, because sin is simply the violation of a received moral code. In our culture’s case, the idea of sin (if not the word) is reserved for violations of our culture’s mora...

In our philosophically relativistic culture, telling someone that you believe in a universal truth is at best, weird, and at worst, offensive. How should Christians, who are commanded by Jesus to “go into all the world and preach the gospel” to everyone, live out and talk about their faith in a world that finds such conversations triggering. Chuck and Aaron discuss the need for wisdom - to know wh...

When you compare what the Bible says about jobs and vocations with what our contemporary, materialistic, Western culture believes, it’s clear that our work is both less important than we’ve thought, and also more important than we’ve thought. Less important, because work promises to be a portal to money and things; hence, a pathway to fulfillment and importance. However, it’s clear from the shatte...

When non-Christians hear Christians talk about repentance, they usually think it’s an attempt by the Christians to call them out for their sins, but the biblical idea of repentance is much bigger than individual sins; repentance is about changing your entire way of life from one outlook, worldview, motives, aims, etc., and substitute that for an entirely new way of being you. Likewise, when Jesus...

All Christians agree that Holy Communion was instituted by Jesus on the night before he was killed, but there the agreement frequently ends. Is the bread and wine we receive at communion an object lesson that helps us to remember and think about Jesus, or does Jesus actually come and give himself to us when we celebrate his supper? While the latter view is the historical view of the church, the fo...

If God saves humans in order to have a relationship with them, then prayer is less a spiritual discipline that must be exercised, or a ritual that must be performed, or a “spiritual” way to work on our psychological help. Instead, prayer is a vital part of our relationship with him. Like any relationship, God wants to hear our voice, to know what we’re thinking about, to open ourselves up to him s...

Christian unity frequently seems to be a reality in theory only. There are so many different opinion groups within the Christian world, so many denominations, and so many subgroups even within those denominations. The primary reason for disunity in general, including in the Christian church, is that we humans have been damaged by the fall and now value power over truth. The result is inevitable –...

Evangelism is inherently uncomfortable in our postmodern culture – the notion that one person has a right to tell someone else what they should think is deeply troubling to many of us. Chuck and Aaron discuss how to do Christian evangelism in a way that respects this concern, and lives and speaks the gospel in a context of relationship-building. When Christians allow the Holy Spirit to lead and gu...

Are we good or are we bad? This is a complex question. When we compare humans to each other it’s hard not to notice that some people are nicer, kinder, harder working, more honest, etc., than others. And in our relationships with other humans, trying to do good and help our neighbors is definitely a good thing! But the Bible insists that, however good or bad someone may be, before God they are not...

Just about every human agrees that being a good person – doing kind things for others, being honest, working hard, etc. – is important. And this is true! But the problem is when we begin using these good things as a way to give ourselves value and try to locate our identity and meaning in these things, because when we examine ourselves closely and honestly we find that our words and actions can’t...

Worship, or the act of ascribing worth, is a universal human activity. Every human being has something that he or she counts as the highest value in their life. These values will inevitably manifest themselves in worship activities: rituals, meals, economic activity, etc. Christian worship is no different: ascribing the highest worth to the creator God who meets us in the person of Jesus of Nazare...

The Bible claims that God loves all the world. Every ethnic group, language group, and nationality; men and women alike; both rich and poor as well as young and old, are welcomed into the family of God. In other words, Christianity is the most inclusive group in the whole world. But the Bible also says the only way to become a member of this family is by faith in Jesus Christ. In other words, Chri...

The Bible claims that the creator God is a God of order and purpose, but everyone agrees that life frequently seems to be out of control. But God’s sovereign rule doesn’t always mean that life will be comfortable, prosperous, and orderly. In fact, God’s order and control is so all-encompassing and powerful that it contains apparent chaos, and he is using what looks like chaos to us to produce good...

The death of Jesus of Nazareth, by crucifixion, is an irrefutable historical fact. But what his death means, if anything, is the subject of much debate. On one level, Jesus was the casualty of Imperial Rome’s claims to universal power – his claim to be in some sense a king came into conflict with Caesar’s claim; but on another level, Christians insist that Jesus’ death paid for the sins of the wor...