Disqus Update – Why I’m Back

Posted on January 13, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

June 2017 Update: Anyone who had followed this blog for a while and pays attention to the comment system will see that I have been rather indecisive with regard to which system to use. I have tried nearly all of them. When I was focused on page load speed, I went with the native WordPress comment system. When I was focused on improving interaction, I gravitated back to Disqus. For the time being I’m back with Disqus.

You may notice that the Disqus comment system is back on this blog. The bottom line is that Disqus just works and I will spend less effort around moderating spam comments. If there is a slight penalty in page load speed, then I will live with it. I tried the native WordPress comment system and was flooded with spam. I added Spam Free WordPress and got no spam but then it was more difficult for humans to comment. I tried IntenseDebate and it seemed to struggle to integrate with other WordPress tools and I would be notified of comments that I could not find within IntenseDebate. So after wandering around in the comment system wilderness, I’m back with Disqus. Any Comments?

Confessions of a functional atheist

Posted on January 12, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 6 Comments

One of the accusations against Christians is that we have a psychological need to believe a fantasy. In other words, the atheist thinks that we make up a belief in God to provide comfort against the unknown. Our belief in God is like whistling as we pass through the graveyard. It doesn’t provide any real benefit but it makes us feel better.

Honesty (the premise of this blog) requires that I get something out in the open. There are times when I don’t want God to exist. It would be oh so much more convenient if he did not and I could do whatever I want. There are times when I want to be god and I don’t want anyone telling me what to do.

This is the atheist position. The position that does not want God to exist and refuses to see any evidence that would point to God. I see this as more of a will issue than an intellectual one. My intellect tends to go where my will leads it. I often remember a line I heard a long time ago,

“a man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still”

God tells me to forgive, even when I don’t want to forgive. God tells me to love when I would rather hate. God tells me to respect when I feel disdain. God tells me to give when I would rather take. God tells me to value others above myself. All of these commands are difficult and I sometimes do not obey them. In those moments when I refuse obedience, I become a functional atheist; I act as if God does not exist.

Too often we see this in the church. Pastors and elders have to deal with people who write off Scriptural commands with the magic words, “it’s all in the interpretation” or “not everyone agrees with such a literal understanding.” Jesus predicted that some would fall away because of the demands of the Christian life (see Matthew 13:3-9). At one point in Jesus’ ministry his disciples referred to his teaching as a “hard saying” (John 6:60). When you examine Christianity in its entirety, it is sometimes very inconvenient.

We serve a God who does care how we behave. We do not serve a semi-senile grandfather God who always pats us on the head and says, “that’s nice.” We serve a God who demands holiness, a demand so important to him that he sent Jesus to provide for us the means of obtaining holiness.

Every moment of the day, I must choose to live according to my belief or to deny my belief in God. By God’s grace, most of the time I choose correctly and move toward deeper relationship with him. Yet, there are times when in my pride and stupidity I choose badly. When I choose badly, I am then given the opportunity to repent and choose well (1 John 1:9).

I believe in Jesus Christ because he provides the best explanation of the world I see around me. I believe in him because I think that he is indeed the truth (John 14:6). Sometimes, it is a very inconvenient truth and I do not live up to it, yet it remains the truth.

You may choose to disbelieve but please make that choice based on an accurate understanding of Christianity. Too often those who oppose God present a caricature of Christianity, a straw man easily knocked down. The real thing is far more elaborate and far more beautiful than the caricature.

Homeland Security for the Church – The Need to Defend the Faith

Posted on January 10, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 3 Comments

For my generation and our progeny, the church cannot start from the position that people want religion and are shopping around to determine what religion is right or best. We cannot take for granted that people in the community feel a need for God. The popularity of the writings of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins is evidence enough of hostility in our culture toward God and religion.

The fact that acts of aggression are done in the name of religion does not increase receptiveness to Christianity. The church (using the term very loosely) does not have a perfect record in this regard. The Inquisition and the Crusades are often used as evidence of the danger of religion. Added to this are recent horrors perpetrated by followers of Islam. Homicidal bombers and terrorist pilots have murdered thousands of innocent people in the name of Allah.

In the face of all this, the church is still called to fulfill her mission. Jesus gave the church her marching orders as recorded in Matthew 28:18–20. We are called by Jesus to make disciples. Disciple making is the main verb and main thought of this commission. We make disciples by going, teaching and baptizing.

Because boomers are suspicious of religion, it is not enough for the church to know what we believe, it is now more important to know why we believe it. We not only need to know the truth, we need to understand why it is the truth and why Christianity offers the best explanation of man and his world.

We, as the church, must stand up to the false dichotomy between belief and reason that permeates western culture. This dichotomy is illustrated by a bumper sticker that a coworker proudly displayed saying, “If you don’t pray in my school, I won’t think in your church.” The implication is that there can be no overlap between thinking and believing.

Many churches do a fantastic job of teaching the Bible and how to live according to Biblical principles. Yet too often, believers are not trained in how to explain their belief to their neighbors. We often do a poor job of training our young people about how Christianity stands out in the marketplace of ideas and competing world views. Because we do not explain to our young people that there is a rational basis for belief in Jesus Christ, because we do not train them about the implications of belief or non-belief, because we do not prepare them to encounter hostility and pseudo-intellectualism, many of our young people fall away and reject Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Peter challenges us to

“sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15 NASB)

We take national security very seriously. In response to the September 11 attacks, America developed an organization called the Department of Homeland Security. In the same way, the church should have a renewed interest in homeland security for the church. We are under attack, we have an enemy that wants to destroy us and we need to know how to respond.

This is a call to church leaders to train themselves to defend the faith and contend for the claims of Jesus Christ. We need to offer answers to those who are searching for them. The Sunday sermon, as important as it is, is not enough to sustain belief. Other opportunities for discussion and training need to be provided.

We also need to provide a forum for questioners to find answers. There are answers to the questions that they are asking, but too often the church shames them into silence.

If we do not raise up a generation of defenders of the faith, those of us in church leadership will one day have to give an answer to our Lord as to why we did not.

Question: What is your church doing to provide answers to hard questions and train people to defend their faith?

Hunger and Thirst for the Right Thing

Posted on January 8, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

#8 in the Sermon on the Mount Series

Matthew 5:6 reads this way in the NASB:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Hunger is Natural

In this Beatitude, the word translated hunger speaks of an avid, strong desire. The word translated thirst speaks of intense longing. Hunger and thirst are part of our common experience of life. They are drives that are built into us so that we draw in the water and nutrition we need to keep our bodies going.

Jesus uses language that we can all understand. All of us have experience hunger for food and thirst for water. As he did with the woman at the well in John 4, Jesus is pointing us beyond our natural hunger and thirst to a higher spiritual reality. He is saying that in the same way we need food and water to be physically healthy; we need righteousness to be spiritually healthy.

The verbs translated hunger and thirst are in the present tense. Jesus is not referring to an event in the past on which we can rest our hope, nor is it an event only in the future. The present tense indicates current, ongoing action. He is saying, “Blessed are those who continue hungering and thirsting after righteousness.”

What is Righteousness Anyway?

Growing up, I always understood this beatitude to be encouraging us toward right actions. In other words, hunger and thirst after doing the right thing. I now think that this is not the primary emphasis.

Keep in mind that among the hearers of Jesus were the Pharisees. They would hear this beatitude and think themselves to be already achieving this. They did many “righteous” acts. Yet later in the sermon, Jesus tells us that “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20) So, this beatitude cannot be primarily focused on righteous acts.

What then is the righteousness to which Jesus refers? The righteousness we are encouraged to pursue is right standing before God. This is a righteousness that begins on the inside and works its way out in actions.

Righteousness has three aspects:

Right legal standing before God – those in Christ have been declared righteous (Romans 8:1)
Right heart attitude (see Psalm 51)
Right actions which result from 1 and 2 (see James 2:14-26)

The Source of Righteousness

The Apostle Paul, in Ephesians 2:1-10, tells us that we are born dead in our “trespasses and sins.” But through faith in Jesus Christ, God gives us spiritual life. As a result, we are no longer trapped in our selfish, sinful lifestyle. We have the option to use the freedom given to us to walk away from our sins.

Apart from Christ, we may clean ourselves up on the outside, but we would then be like the Pharisees who were condemned by Jesus as “white washed tombs” (Matthew 23:27). A whitewashed tomb may look nice on the outside but inside it is full of rottenness and decay.

Jesus Christ is the only source of true righteousness available to us.

The Promise

Jesus tells us that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled. The word literally means eat until full.

This filling is a certainty because anyone who has this desire has Jesus waiting to embrace him. There is no chance of rejection. If righteousness is your desire, if you’re tired of your current lifestyle and want something better, Jesus will accept you. Jesus invites all who are “weary and burdened” to come to him and he will give them rest (Matthew 11:28). There are no exceptions, no-one is rejected.

I love that no matter how bad I mess up, if my desire is for righteousness, that desire will be satisfied. It will be done, not in my strength, but by Jesus Christ. Paul tells us in Philippians 1:6 that God began the process in me and he will see it through to the end. I do not have to worry about the outcome, I simply need to trust in God and he will direct where and how I should go (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Are you hungry and thirsty for righteousness? Jesus is waiting for you.