Category: Government and Faith

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Symbols

Emojis
Emojis

Humans seem to enjoy using symbols for everything in life. Notice the emoticons and emojis used in electronic communication. It is interesting that the use of symbols to convey meaning is an attribute of humans that is not seen in any other form of life. Animals may use sounds or chemicals to alert others of their kind to danger, territory, or sexual availability, but these are not symbols. Sometimes symbols have different meanings to different cultures or even different generations. In my hippie days, holding up two fingers in a “V” meant “peace.” When I was first inducted into military service, the same symbol meant “victory” and indicated an intention to conquer. Symbols convey information, and as the deaf can demonstrate to us, they can even form the basis of complex communication.

Our use of symbols is a reflection of our spiritual makeup. We can create art, express ourselves in music, and worship God because we possess a soul which allows these unique forms of expression. The most mentally challenged among us can use symbols and rejoice in being able to do so.

Sometimes symbols and their use are unique to a particular time in human history. A classic example of this is the use of the cross. In today’s world, the cross is universally accepted as a symbol of Christianity. People wear crosses to express their personal faith. The cross is put on many buildings, Bibles, and along our roadsides. Steven Lemley in an article in Power for Today (January 2, 2017) points out that in the first century the cross was only a sign of the execution of guilty criminals. He reminds us that wearing a cross or having it adorn a place of worship in the first century, would be like us today wearing the image of a hypodermic needle used in executions. Many saw the cross as a stumbling block (1 Corinthians 1:23) or a sign of God’s weakness. Paul used the cross as a symbol of separating ourselves from the world (Galatians 6:14) as well as crucifying our sinful nature (Romans 6:6).

For the first century Christians, the outline of a fish was used as a symbol. The Greek word “fish” spelled out an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” Archaeological discoveries of ancient Christian symbols display the fish and sometimes a young man holding a lamb. Today we see people with fish symbols on their cars. We also see the cross used as a symbol to remind us of the terrible suffering that Jesus endured, and the ultimate victory of Christ over sin. All symbols, even emojis, can remind us that we have an eternal spiritual nature that we can express in many ways. The use of symbols, worship, and prayer are uniquely human features reminding us that we were created in the image of God.
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst © 2017

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The Event that Changed the World

Empty Tomb

Early on the first day of the week, some women came to the tomb where the lifeless body of Jesus had been placed. It was empty. It had been opened–not by any human hands but by an angel. It wasn’t opened to let Jesus out. The tomb was opened so that people might see that it was empty. The followers of Jesus were not expecting him to be alive again. At first, they couldn’t believe it. Powerful people tried to find the body or to convince the public that it had been stolen. But they could not.

Now, over 2000 years later, there are still those who try to deny the resurrection. The evidence is there. The friends of Jesus were not expecting the resurrection, but after they had seen him alive, they spent the rest of their lives telling others about it. Even when they were tortured and killed for preaching the resurrection, not one of them ever recanted. Without a body, the powerful enemies of Jesus could not disprove the resurrection.

In 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, written only a few years after the resurrection of Jesus, the Apostle Paul recorded what scholars believe was an oral tradition of the resurrection appearances dating back to the very time of the resurrection. If it had not been true, this tradition and Paul’s record of it would have been debunked by the eyewitnesses who were still around. It was true, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most solidly attested event of ancient history. The world will never be the same because of the day when death was conquered.
–Roland Earnst © 2017

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Excruciating Pain!

Crucifixion Of Jesus
Crucifixion Of Jesus

The ancient Assyrian army would drive a stake into the chest of their enemies impaling them. Then they would plant that stake in the ground to display their victim. They did this both to frighten and to intimidate those who would oppose them.

The ancient Romans further refined this gruesome tactic. Instead of impaling their victims on a stake, they nailed them to the stake. Impaling resulted in quick death, but crucifixion extended the horror. Crucifixion was slow and agonizing torture that sometimes lasted more than a day. It’s from this execution method that we get our word “excruciating”–which literally means “from the cross.” Crucifixions took place in public where people could see the victim and become terrified to go against the Roman government. This torture was used for the worst of criminals.

But one time it was used for the only perfect man who ever lived. He had done nothing wrong. He died for those of us who have sinned. He suffered excruciating pain and public humiliation in a way that demonstrated love and grace. He went willingly to the cross. Even more amazing is the fact that while suffered on the cross he forgave his tormentors. From the cross, he even pardoned a real criminal who hung next to him. He forever made the worst form of torture and execution a symbol that millions proudly hold up, wear, and display. What other execution device is so loved? Why do we call the day of his torture and death “Good” Friday? It’s because of God’s amazing love and grace demonstrated in Jesus Christ. That’s the “crux” of the matter.
–Roland Earnst © 2017

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Baptism for the Dead

Baptism
Baptism

Our ministry is designed to help people with faith problems. Most of our focus in on the scientific evidence for the existence of God and the credibility of the Bible. Unfortunately, we have to spend a significant amount of time dealing with people who have lost their faith in God because of the actions and/or teachings of people who claim to be Christians. Sometimes things are presented in the name of Christianity that are so outlandish that people can see they don’t make sense. When that happens, we find it’s something that isn’t in the Bible or is a distortion of what the Bible says.

In 1 Corinthians 15:29 the King James translation of the passage reads: “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?” The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which is the top governing body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (known as the Mormon Church), teaches that modern day Mormons should be baptized for dead ancestors who didn’t receive baptism while they were alive. On April 1-2, 2017, the Quorum met at a conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, that was broadcast in 90 languages throughout the world. They urged members of the Mormon church to participate in the “Baptism for the Dead” ritual.

We have already received some challenges from atheists and skeptics about this practice. The skeptics say that the concept of people choosing to believe in Christ and having the freedom to reject God is destroyed by this practice. We have to side with the atheists here and say that such a practice is ludicrous and makes a mockery of the purpose of baptism. God never forces people to believe or to accept a religious practice and no person can do so on behalf of someone else.

The Mormon baptism is a long way from the baptism described in the Bible. Romans 6 explains baptism as a dying to sin in complete repentance to no longer be a slave to sin. It is an act of becoming a “new person.” Baptism is never portrayed as a ticket to heaven done without understanding or choice. To correctly understand 1 Corinthians 15:29 we need to take it in context. The phrase “for the dead” in the original Greek is “huper nekroon.” This is more accurately translated “on account of.” In the context, beginning in verse 12 the Apostle Paul is writing about the resurrection of Christ. He is challenging those who say that Christ has not been raised from the dead. Then in verse 29, Paul is simply saying, “Why be baptized if there is no resurrection?” In verse 19 Paul points out the fact that if there is nothing after this life, Christians have no hope and should be pitied. But in the entire passage he is insisting that the resurrection of Christ is real, and therefore so will be the resurrection of Christ’s followers who have been baptized. (Examine Romans 6:3-5.) The notion that we can somehow do a proxy baptism flies in the face of everything Paul taught in the rest of the chapter and the rest of the New Testament.

If you are an atheist or a skeptic, it is important to be sure you know what the Bible actually says. Inaccurate translations or human misrepresentations of what the Bible says cannot be attacked as a part of the Christian system. Each of us must answer to God for ourselves. No one can do it for you while you are alive or when you are dead.
The Mormon teaching was reported in an AP news story by Brady McCombs carried in newspapers on Sunday, April 2, 2017.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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The Church-State Problem

Religious Separation
Religious Separation

The polarization that has taken place in America in the past 25 years is appalling. That statement is true on many levels with the political situation being the one that gets the most attention in the media. The relationship between the Church and the State has strong advocates that have very different agendas.

On one side of the issue are groups who advocate freedom FROM religion. They don’t want religious people to take a public stand on moral issues. Americans United for Separation of Church and State is an example of such a group. They say: “We envision an America where everyone can freely choose a faith and support it voluntarily, or follow no religious or spiritual path at all, and where the government does not promote religion over non-religion or favor one faith over another.” That sounds good, but the problem with groups like this is that they do not want any attempt on the part of religious people to evangelize or to promote moral agendas. You can go to church if you wish, but don’t say or do anything outside of the church walls that demonstrate your faith. Any religious group opposing gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia, legalizing marijuana, or any other moral issue is considered to be violating the separation of Church and State. Also, when a church congregation helps families with food shortages, they cannot let the families know that they are doing so because of their religious convictions or invite them to any church events if they use any government commodities, even if the church purchases those commodities. A Christian can be fined or jailed in America for publicly living out their faith in opposition to gay marriage or other moral issues.

On the other side are groups advocating freedom OF religion. An example is Alliance Defending Freedom who strongly oppose any government interference with individual expressions of religious belief. Groups like this are fighting in courts for the right of religious people to live out their faith in the public arena. The problem is that some fringe religious groups hold to something that clashes with the safety and well-being of innocent people. An example is those who oppose medical treatment for disease. We had a case in Indiana in which a child was an insulin-dependent diabetic, and the parents refused to allow the child to have insulin shots on religious grounds.

These are tough questions. The lesson of history is that when a religion gains control of the government, the result is always a disaster. It is also a lesson from history that when a government embraces atheism and enforces it, the result is anarchy and chaos. America has become more and more antagonistic to religious belief and expression, and the result is chaos and conflict tearing at the very fabric of our existence as a nation. The founding fathers had no desire to make America an atheist state. Some people today want to allow any kind of dissent as long as God is not mentioned or involved in any way. Rendering to “Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” should not be that difficult, but vested interests are making it difficult for religious freedom to exist. Romans 13:1-7 spells out the solution. Whether America will officially adopt the atheist religion or turn back to the ideal of our founding fathers remains to be seen.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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UFO Nonsense Continues

Science Fiction UFO
The media seems to have become weary of UFO stories, but the phenomenon continues. Remember is just an acronym for Unidentified Flying Object. That does not mean that the object is a spaceship or has intelligent beings involved, it simply means that the observer is too ignorant to know what they are looking at. There are several reasons why people see UFOs. People “see” UFOs to get attention, to make money, to play a joke, as a substitute for faith in God, or because they misunderstand a natural event or object. Session 14 in our video series shows possible natural explanations for some of these sightings. (Watch it on our doesgodexist.tv website).

USA Today (March 28, 2017) says that in 2016 there were 5,516 reported UFO sightings in the world. The ignorance of the public about natural causes for strange lights and objects in the sky is enormous, but many of these sightings are claimed abductions and contacts which have in the past always turned out to be bogus. Let us say once again that it is not our purpose to claim that there is no life in outer space because the Bible doesn’t say that. If there is life, God designed it. The fact is that many people seem to be willing to accept a story about an alien abduction but reject the claim that Jesus Christ lived on the Earth and demonstrated that He was the Son of God.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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ID Extremism

Scientific Research

Twelve years ago every major news magazine had multiple articles on the Intelligent Design Movement, and it was getting many comments in scientific journals of every discipline and at every level. Unfortunately, most of the publicity was negative. This is not too surprising to see in the media, but it is disturbing when it starts showing up in reputable scientific journals that have traditionally not been antagonistic to belief in God. In this case, the villains causing the antagonism were not all atheists. Apologetic journals like Science and Theology News, The Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, and Science and Spirit joined the chorus of voices opposing the teaching of ID in school science classes.

Before going any further in this discussion, we would like to emphasize that the material presented by people like Michael Behe is a wonderful apologetic. I mean that the work by the primary Intelligent Design scientists is wonderful material to convince the skeptic that there is design in the world around us and that chance is an invalid mechanism to explain the creation of the world. In our materials, we use design as a means of discussing whether the cause of the creation is blind, mechanistic chance or whether a personal intelligence created the cosmos for a purpose. What should not be done is to use the Intelligent Design as a means of doing science, or determining what science should and should not investigate. The idea of using ID as a means of doing science is an extreme view, and that is what many critics of the ID movement have pointed out.

Our understanding of how natural processes work has enabled us to know that viruses can mutate and become a major threat to human life. We know this because science has learned that there are mechanisms in the genetic makeup of living things that allow mutations to happen. This is a kind of factual evolution, and it is at the basis of much of what is done in the world of medicine today. That does not contradict the Bible, or that deny that intelligence was involved in the design of life. This adaptability built into the design of life is what allows us to develop agriculture in a way that augments the food supply. It has allowed life to exist in a variety of habitats, and it is vital to our understanding of how we should manage resources.

The problem with some ID promoters is that they would attempt to deny all of this. If you say that God created the virus as is and that no change can take place, you are simply in error. If you say that this kind of change might occur, but that more complicated changes cannot and therefore should not be investigated, you have stopped research and stifled investigations that might be very important. Human misunderstanding cannot be allowed to stop the research to find what is true. Part of the problem here is not understanding what evolution is and confusing the fact of evolution with various theories of evolution. Medical science recognizes the kind of change that we are concerned about with influenza viruses. In the Bible we see Jacob doing things with Laban’s flocks that incorporate the same ideas.

Intelligent Design is not a method of doing science. We will not use it to build a new drug to fight cancer or to make a new rocket. As new drugs are developed, and new journeys to other worlds are taken, what we discover will agree with and support faith in God and in the Bible. Let us use the discoveries of science to help us see God’s wisdom and design in the world. Let’s not assume that somehow our inability to understand what God has done will lead us to develop a medical cure or a new and beneficial device.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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License Plate Storm Brewing

Indiana License Plate
Indiana License Plate

Here in Indiana, there has been a battle going for many years about what you can put on a license plate. Personalized plates are legal here, but they must meet three criteria:

*They cannot carry a connotation offensive to good taste or decency.
*They cannot be misleading.
*The BMV (Bureau of Motor Vehicles) cannot consider it improper.

In 2013 when the BMV refused to allow a motorist to have a plate that just had “OINK” written on it, the ACLU sued. Almost any religious message has been considered offensive and improper, so “Jesus Saves” has been rejected and having the name of a church has been rejected. These cases have been local because no one wanted to go to court until this February when Chris Bontrager of Goshen was told he couldn’t put “ATHEIST” on a plate. The ACLU got involved again, and on March 20 Bontrager got his plate.

The question now becomes why an atheist should be allowed to put his belief system on the plate when no one else has been given the same privilege. The answer may simply be that no one asked, but you can be sure there will be people jumping on the wagon at this point, and all kinds of messages will be suggested.

Part of the problem here is the question of religious pluralism. If “CHRISTIAN” can’t be put on the plate because it is offensive to Hindus, Muslims, or Atheists, why can’t the same logic apply to “ATHEIST.” Stay tuned.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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Antony Flew and the Failures of Modern Atheism

Antony Flew was one of the most famous atheists of the twentieth century. He wrote over thirty books opposing religion and was a professor at the University of Keele and at Oxford, Aberdeen, and Reading. Flew changed his mind about the existence of God because he said, “You have to go where the evidence leads you.” In his final book There is a God he describes the failures of modern atheism:

1) Atheists refuse to engage the real issues involved in the question of God’s existence.
2) Atheists do not address the central grounds for positing a divine reality.
3) Atheists fail to address the issue of the origins of rationality embedded in the fabric of the universe, of life understood as autonomous agency, and of consciousness, conceptual thought, and the self.
4) Atheists show no awareness of the fallacies and muddles that led to the rise and fall of logical positivism. The “new atheism” is nothing less than a regression to the logical positivist philosophy.
5) The excesses and atrocities of organized religion have no bearing whatsoever on the existence of God.

You find more details on each of these points in Flew’s book. Atheists try to suggest that only the ignorant and uneducated believe in God, but the evidence is to the contrary. Flew is just one example of people with extraordinary intelligence who see the evidence and base what they believe on that evidence.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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Global Warming Nonsense

Global Warming Thermometer
The “hot button topic” for a wide variety of people today is the issue of global warming. It is easy to understand why political figures want to use this issue to manipulate their followers, but followers of Jesus Christ seem to be getting swept up in the paranoia also. Jesus said, “Take care that no one misleads you. For many will come claiming my name and saying, ‘I am the Messiah’; and many will be misled by them. The time is coming when you will hear the noise of battle near at hand and the news of battles far away; see that you are not alarmed. Such things are bound to happen; but the end is still to come. For nation will make war upon nation, kingdom upon kingdom; there will be famines and earthquakes in many places. With all these things the birth-pangs of the new age begin” (Matthew 24:5-8 NEB). We need to be informed, but global warming is not of eternal significance. Some people try to make a religion of climate change. We can get involved scientifically or politically if we so choose, but let us not get involved religiously.

So what are the facts?
#1. Climate change is happening. Anyone can look at climate data worldwide and see the changes on a global scale. This is global–not local. We just had the warmest winter here in Michigan that I can remember, and I have lived here almost 60 years, but that is not directly due to global warming.

#2. This is not the first time. The Earth’s rocks show periods of warming and cooling. Natural processes cause changes in the Sun which affect the Earth. Geologic events such as volcanic eruptions can affect climate for long periods of time.

#3. Humans have altered the planet. This isn’t even worth commenting on, and what we have done has effects that are still unknown. God told us to “take care of the garden” (Genesis 2:15), and as custodians of the planet, we need to take care of it. Releasing greenhouse gasses indiscriminately would seem to be failing to do that.

#4. There are consequences to what we do and what we don’t do. As an example, cancer is mostly caused by human actions. The list of diseases human actions have caused or catalyzed is enormous. Not managing Earth’s resources well has cost us dearly in the past, and it will do so in the future.

Jesus said not to let these things disturb our minds. As Christians, we need to keep our eye on the cross and on our journey to an eternal home free of global warming, war, and all the other things that concern people about the physical world in which we live. The physical is important, but the spiritual is far more significant.
–John N. Clayton © 2017