I Believe

My friend, Seth Fisher, recently passed this creed onto me.

He found it in the Celtic Daily Prayer and I found it encouraging.

“I still believe in the power of the priesthood, where

sinful men are helped by sinful men. I believe in an

authority that stoops to wash a poor man’s feet. I

Believe in a banquet where sinners learn to love,

eating in company with their God. I believe in parents

who teach their children the beauty that is life.

I believe in the words that God has left for man, words

that can fashion hope from darkness and turn bitter

loneliness into love. And I believe in the beauty

of his mind, the force of his emotions, the fire and loyalty of his

love. I know his weakness, his cowardice, his treachery, his hate. But

I believe in him and his thirst for acceptance and love.

Most of all I believe in God and the power of His victory in Christ. I believe

In a Resurrection that rescued man from death. I believe in an Easter that opened man

To hope. I believe in a peace that I know in fleeting moments and seek with boldness born

Of God. I believe in a life that lingers after this, and a life that God has fashioned for His friends.

I believe in understanding, in forgivenss, in mercy, in faith. I believe in man’s love for woman,

and hers for him, and in the fervor of this exchange I hear the voice of God. I believe in friendship and its power to turn selfishness to love. I believe in eternity and the hope that it affords.

Fr. James Kavanagh

A Reason for God. . .Interview with Tim Keller

This video is lengthy, but great.

As our culture is becoming more and more bombarded with myriads of belief systems, there are good reasons to develop a reasonable apologetic for the Christian faith. That is, you better know why you believe what you believe. It is our responsibility to do so. We are called to be able to "give an account" for why we believe what we believe.

Of course, there are good, good reasons for the existence of God. However, you're not going to win over a skeptic of the faith by proving the existence of God by way of the Bible. . .skeptics today don't believe the Bible. We cannot use the Bible to prove the Bible, as it were.

So, we need to start at even a more foundational place with people in order to help them come to understand practically that there is a God. The older Christian apologetic books like Evidence that Demands a Verdict often assume that the reader has at least some respect for the authority of the Bible. Today that is not as true as it was thirty years ago. The arguments (I mean that word in the best sense) that we have for our faith need to be sourced in the reasonability/plausibility of the existence of a God. In fact, there is good reason to see that being an atheist actually requires more faith than being a Christian.

What Keller is brilliant at is entering the predominate belief systems of the day and showing that those systems are often self-contradictory and collapse on themselves. . .they require great faith to believe in.

Here is a great conversation with a tough interrogator who is asking some deep questions about the Christian faith. Not only does Keller answer thoughtfully and thoroughly, but with civility and kindness.

Enjoy.

The God of Mission

"It is not the church of God that has a mission. It's the God of mission that has a church."

-Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury