Anyone who knows New York’s J-Train immediately understands a few key proverbs: One, the J-Train is best ridden during the day; Two, the J-Train through Brooklyn is not a very safe ride; Three, the J-Train is best avoided. In my old high school another proverb might be added to the list but it sounded more like an ancient curse: damned are those who go to school in the shadow of the J-Train.
Trying my hand at writing a modern day Psalm.
My buddy-blogger Darrell first scored Amillenial on the Eschatology quiz and then took dispensationalism to town citing some problems inherent in the system and some really bad press due to overzealous Left Behind Series theologians. Darrell rightly points out that taken to its extremes dispensationalism can become a sort of mythology which allows non-Christians to dismiss Christianity as a Sci-Fi Cult…a point which gave me pause.
You scored as Premillenialist, Premillenialism believes that there will be a rapture and tribulation before Jesus returns and overthrows the antichrist and establishes his Kingdom. Current events are spoken of in scripture.
What’s your eschatology? |
It was tough answering these questions because of the way they were phrased. (HT: Jeremy)
This just in: the Catholic Church doesn’t think Protestant Churches are true churches (as they define it). It cracks me up that Protestants are flipping out about this since its basically the same position since the 16th Century. Here’s the clause causing fuss even though I link to the full thing above, here and here.
Fifth Question: Why do the texts of the Council and those of the Magisterium since the Council not use the title of
Virginia Tech…32 dead: why? The question that always comes up after something like this is: how can there be a good God if there is so much evil in the world? How come he doesn
Death is humiliating. It doesn
That was the quote from a recent Law and Order Special Victim’s Unit where a gay Christian young man realized that his pastor father had killed his lover. The young man was part of an extremist group of Christians who performed plays depicting sinners screaming and burning in hell. But his question got me thinking: was he on point?
As you know I like to read, I like to write, and I like to combine both with the Bible (that is reading it and writing about it, not creating new chapters). Some people find reading the Good Book a tad too hard and sometimes, when they hear it being read with monotonous intonations (economics, supply, demand, Peter, James, and John) they find their eyes crossing, their vision blurring and visions of past movies start to replay in their mind.
I heard some theologian guys saying that Pelagianism is the natural belief system of men. No, I’m not talking about copying someone elses thoughts. Pelagius (not a Sith Lord either) believed that Jesus was a good example (whereas Adam was a bad example) to humanity and therefore humans have a responsibility to save themselves by doing good (which is carrying out God’s commandments). God could help people but really thought Pelagius, men and women have the free will and moral capacity to do it on their own.
Thing is, I can see people saying “we have the ability to choose” and I can see people saying “Adam was a bad example and Jesus was a good example” but I can’t see many people, without reading the stuff, saying they had the will and moral capacity to keep the commandments of any god (Go hold the heavens on your shoulder) and especially the Judeo-Christian God as clarified by Jesus.
For instance, Jesus explained one of the commandments that spoke about committing adultery and said that if a man looks at a woman with lust, then he has committed adultery already. I don’t think anyone would naturally believe that they had the free will and moral ability to stop the lust in the mind (or elsewhere for that matter). Jesus furthered his point by pointing out one of the commandments that spoke about murder and then stated that if a man is angry at his brother, he’s committed murder already.
In other words, the fact that Jesus is showing that our actions are just as messed up as our thought process seems to me that a person can’t automatically be a natural Pelagian (gessuhnteit) but rather have to be a circumstantial moralist which has nothing to do with God or Jesus’ example at all, but everything to do with ethics