Tag: New Atheism

Digging in Deeper: Acts 2:46-47

Leave a comment

“Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When the church exploded into existence and as it began to spread across the Roman Empire thanks to the faithful, devoted work of the apostle Paul, it was something new. Entirely new. There wasn’t anything else in the world quite like it. Because of that, it was often attractive to people who were wealthy and influential. It was a novelty, and people who fancy themselves as sitting at the top of the social ladder are often drawn to new things so they can say they were the first to see and experience them. Some two thousand years later, Christianity wasn’t new anymore. It was old. Very old. It was passe. The wealthy and influential didn’t care much anymore. And this was separate and apart from all of the criticism it was receiving for both imagined and real faults on the part of the church. But in the last couple of years, something interesting has begun to happen. Let’s talk about it for a few minutes today.

Continue reading “Digging in Deeper: Acts 2:46-47” →

Digging in Deeper: 1 Peter 2:12

182 Comments

“Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

In the wake of 9/11 there arose a whole new generation of atheists. And while their arguments were not new at all, their boldness, their rhetorical cleverness, and their energetic hostility toward all religion and Christianity in particular put a pretty new dress and an attractive layer of makeup on an old model. And, thanks to the horrible actions taken by a handful of radical Muslim terrorists, they had plenty of ammunition for their argument that religion was the biggest problem facing the world. It is deeply ironic, of course, that most of them spent most of their time making their arguments from the comfort and relative safety of Western nations with a tradition of freedom of expression that that has only ever existed in cultures created and shaped by the very Christian worldview they loved to lampoon and not in places like, say, Iran where their comments could have easily gotten them arrested and killed, but we’ll leave that alone for now. Their hatred and ridicule has inspired a whole new generation of young atheists (who aren’t so young anymore…) who relish poking holes in the faith of their Christian friends and family members. The movement’s cultural power has largely faded in recent years, but every now and then one of the surviving original leaders of the movement will say something that makes a bit of a splash. Well, Richard Dawkins, the man who was always the leading highlight of the group recently said something in an interview that has gotten everyone talking again. But this time, instead of attacking Christianity, he was claiming it. Let’s talk some today about what he said and why it matters.

Read the rest…