David French - Why Pop Culture Losing Their Faith

Another Pop-Culture Christian Loses His Faith 

By David French National Review

August 13, 2019 4:40 PM 

It’s happened again. For the second time in three weeks, a prominent (at least in Evangelical circles) Christian has renounced his faith. In July, it was Josh Harris, a pastor and author of the mega-best-selling purity-culture book I Kissed Dating Goodbye. This month, it’s Hillsong United songwriter and worship leader Marty Sampson.

For those who don’t know, Hillsong United is one of the most popular and influential worship bands of the modern era. It was born at Hillsong Church in Australia and its albums routinely top the Christian charts — in fact, Billboard’s chart history gives it no fewer than eight number-one Christian albums.

It’s a powerhouse in what my former pastor derisively referred to as the “Jesus is my boyfriend” style of worship music. Their songs featured heartfelt, simple lyrics pledging undying Christian love and devotion. They also happen to inspire millions of Christians across the globe.

The relative lack of theological depth to much of Hillsong’s music has brought a predictable response to Sampson’s announcement — shallow songs, shallow theology. But I’m not sure that’s right. Of course only Sampson knows his own heart, but I want to focus on something else. Parts of his Instagram announcement of his change of heart just don’t ring true. I won’t paste the entire statement, but this part stood out to me:

“This is a soapbox moment so here I go . . . How many preachers fall? Many. No one talks about it. How many miracles happen. Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send four billion people to a place, all ‘coz they don’t believe? No one talks about it. Christians can be the most judgmental people on the planet — they can also be some of the most beautiful and loving people. But it’s not for me.”

What is he talking about? “No one talks about” preachers falling, miracles, alleged biblical contradictions, or the challenge of hell? I take a backseat to no one in decrying youth ministries that concentrate more on ultimate Frisbee than on catechesis — or on pastors who focus on self-help to the exclusion of sound doctrine — but you simply cannot grow up in an Evangelical church without discussing many of these topics incessantly.

Yes, you can pass in and out of church — attend casually without going to Sunday school — and sometimes hear only therapeutic messages from the pulpit, but if you live in the church, as he did, you have real trouble believing his words. You also have seen the same thing many times — adults fall away in the face of the pressures of the world, rationalizing their departure with words that ring true to everyone except Christians who know what the church is really like. 

As our culture changes, secularizes, and grows less tolerant of Christian orthodoxy, I’m noticing a pattern in many of the people who fall away (again, only Sampson knows his heart): They’re retreating from faith not because they’re ignorant of its key tenets and lack the necessary intellectual, theological depth but rather because the adversity of adherence to increasingly countercultural doctrine grows too great.

Put another way, the failure of the church isn’t so much of catechesis but of fortification — of building the pure moral courage and resolve to live your faith in the face of cultural headwinds.

In my travels around the country, one thing has become crystal clear to me. Christians are not prepared for the social consequences of the profound cultural shifts — especially in more secular parts of the nation. They’re afraid to say what they believe, not because they face the kind of persecution that Christians face overseas but because they’re simply not prepared for any meaningful adverse consequences in their careers or with their peers.

C. S. Lewis famously said that courage is the “form of every virtue at its testing point.” In practical application, this means that no person truly knows if he possesses any virtue until it’s tested. Do you think you’re loving? You’ll know you truly love another person only when loving that person is hard. Do you think you’re truthful? You’ll know only when telling the truth hurts. Soldiers are familiar with this phenomenon — most men who travel to the battlefield believe themselves to be brave, but they know they’re brave only if they do their duty when their life is on the line.

Earlier this summer, I spoke at an event in Georgia and discussed what I called the “courage cure to political correctness.” Are you afraid? Speak anyway, with humility, grace, and conviction. The law protects, but the culture resists you. After I spoke, a man came up to me and said, “That’s fine for you to say, but you don’t know what corporate America is like.”

I told him that I did know, and that I’ve experienced its bite.

He said no. He said, “It’s like East Germany now.” I asked him if he had tested that proposition, if he’d shared his beliefs in any meaningful way. He said no. He’d preemptively silenced himself.

That’s one version of failing in the face of adversity. Another version is represented by the person who simply wilts, who adopts the critiques of the secular world and lobs grenades back at the church as he leaves.

Are you faithful? I’d submit that you don’t know until that faith is truly tested — either in dramatic moments of crisis or in the slow, steady buildup of worldly pressure and secular scorn. As the worldly pressure and secular scorn continue to mount, expect to see more announcements like Josh Harris’s and Marty Sampson’s. Expect to see more friends and neighbors retreat and conform.  

The church has its faults, yes, but the blame will lie less with a church that failed to instruct than with a person who didn’t, ultimately, have the courage to believe.

Nicole Cliffe : How God Messed Up My Happy Atheist Life

I had no untapped, unanswered yearnings. All was well in the state of Denmark. And then it wasn’t.  Nicole Cliffe/ May 20, 2016

I became a Christian on July 7, 2015, after a very pleasant adult life of firm atheism. I’ve found myself telling “the story” when people ask me about it—slightly tweaked for my audience, of course. When talking to non-theists, I do a lot of shrugging and “Crazy, right? Nothing has changed, though!” When talking to other Christians, it’s more, “Obviously it’s been very beautiful, and I am utterly changed by it.” But the story has gotten a little away from me in the telling.

As an atheist since college, I had already mellowed a bit over the previous two or three years, in the course of running a popular feminist website that publishes thoughtful pieces about religion. Like many atheists (who are generally lovely moral people like my father, who would refuse to enter heaven and instead wait outside with his Miles Davis LPs), I started out snarky and defensive about religion, but eventually came to think it was probably nice for people of faith to have faith. I held to that, even though the idea of a benign deity who created and loved us was obviously nonsense, and all that awaited us beyond the grave was joyful oblivion.

I know that sounds depressing, but I found the idea of life ending after death mildly reassuring in its finality. I had started to meet more people of faith, having moved to Utah from Manhattan, and thought them frequently charming in their sweet delusion. I did not wish to believe. I had no untapped, unanswered yearnings. All was well in the state of Denmark. And then it wasn’t.

What I Already Knew

There are two different starting points to my conversion, and sometimes I omit the first one, because I think it gives people an answer I don’t want them to have. It is a simple story: I was going through a hard time. I was worried about my child. One time I said “Be with me” to an empty room. It was embarrassing. I didn’t know why I said it, or to whom. I brushed it off, I moved on, the situation resolved itself, I didn’t think about it again. I know how people hear that story: Oh, of course, Nicole was struggling and needed a larger framework for her life! That’s part of the truth, but it’s not the whole truth.

The second starting point is usually what I lead with. I was surfing the Internet and came across John Ortberg’s CT obituary for philosopher Dallas Willard. John’s daughters are dear friends, and I have always had a wonderful relationship with their parents, who struck me as sweetly deluded in their evangelical faith, so I clicked on the article.

Somebody once asked Dallas if he believed in total depravity.

“I believe in sufficient depravity,” he responded immediately.

What’s that?

“I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, ‘I merited this.’ ”

A few minutes into reading the piece, I burst into tears. Later that day, I burst into tears again. And the next day. While brushing my teeth, while falling asleep, while in the shower, while feeding my kids, I would burst into tears.

I should say here I am a happy, even-keeled soul. If this were the Middle Ages, I would be in a book under the heading “The Four Humors: Sanguine/Phlegmatic.”

Therefore, it was very unsettling to suddenly feel like a boat being tossed on the waves. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t frightened—I just had too many feelings. I decided to buy a Dallas Willard book to read anthropologically, of course. I read his Hearing God. I cried. I bought Lewis Smedes’s My God and I. I cried. I bought Sara Miles’s Take This Bread. I cried. It was getting out of hand. You just can’t go around crying all the time.

At this point, I reached a crossroads. I sat myself down and said: Okay, Nicole, you have two choices. Option One: you can stop reading books about Jesus. Option Two: you could think with greater intention about why you are overwhelmed by your emotions. It occurred to me that if Option Two proved fruitless, I could always return to Option One. 

So I emailed a friend who is a Christian, and I asked if we could talk about Jesus.

I instantly regretted sending that email and if humanly possible would have clawed it back through the Internet. Technology having failed me, my message reached its recipient. She said she would be very happy to talk to me about Jesus. You probably already know this, but Christians love talking about Jesus.

I spent the few days before our call feeling like an idiot, wondering what on earth I planned to ask her. Do you … like Jesus? What was Jesus’ deal? Why did he ice that fig tree?

And now we reach the part of the story that gets a bit hand-wavy. About an hour before our call, I knew: I believed in God. Worse, I was a Christian. It was the opposite of being punk rock.

Now, if you’ve been following along, you know already. I was crying constantly while thinking about Jesus because I had begun to believe that Jesus really was who he said he was, but for some reason, that idea had honestly not occurred to me. But then it did, as though it always had been true. So when my friend called, I told her, awkwardly, that I wanted to have a relationship with God, and we prayed, and giggled a bit, and cried a bit, and then she sent me a stack of Henri Nouwen books, and here we are today.

Since then, I have been dunked by a pastor in the Pacific Ocean while shivering in a too-small wetsuit. I have sung “Be Thou My Vision” and celebrated Communion on a beach, while weirded-out Californians tiptoed around me. I go to church. I pray. My politics have not changed; the fervency with which I try to live them out has. My husband is bemused by me, but supportive and loving.

No More Chill

I am occasionally asked by other Christians, “What happened during that hour?” I answer that God did not speak to me. Rather, like the protagonist in Memento putting his past together with Polaroids, I figured out what I already knew. What happened during that hour was the natural culmination of my coming to faith: I had been cracked open to the divine, I read books that I would have laughed at before the cracking, and the stars lined up and there was God, and then I knew, and then I said it out loud to a third party, and then I giggled.

I am more undone by love, or kindness, or friendship than I would have thought possible.

This is why apologetics, in my opinion, are hugely unconvincing. (Dallas Willard, for the record, never debated unbelievers.) No one could have in a billion years of their gripping testimony or by showing me a radiant life of good deeds or through song or even the most beautiful of books brought me to Christ. I had to be tapped on the shoulder. I had to be taken to a place where books about God were something I could experience without distance. It was alchemical.

I have been asked if deciding to become a Christian ended my exciting new crying-multiple-times-a-day hobby. The truth is that I continue to cry a lot more than I did before either Be-With-Me-Gate or the Dallas Willard Incident. I am more undone by love, or kindness, or friendship than I would have thought possible. Last night I tried to explain who Henri Nouwen was to some visiting cousins, and they had to bring me Kleenex, which they did sweetly and cautiously, as though I might melt in front of them. This morning I read a piece in Texas Monthly that literally sank me to my knees at how broken this world is, and yet how stubbornly resilient and joyful we can be in the face of that brokenness. I never possessed much chill, to be honest. Now I have none whatsoever.

There are times I feel a bit like a medieval peasant, in that I believe wholly in God now, but don’t always do what he wants, or, like Scarlett O’Hara, put hard conversations with him off until I’ve done the thing I wanted to do. It’s a thrumming backdrop to the rest of my life. My Christian conversion has granted me no simplicity. It has complicated all of my relationships, changed how I feel about money, messed up my public persona, and made me wonder if I should be on Twitter at all.

Obviously, it’s been very beautiful.

Nicole Cliffe is cofounder and coeditor of the website The Toast and lives in Utah.

"What should you do if your son says he’s a girl?" Thoughts on Gender Dysphoria

Gender Dysphoria in the News

It seems you can’t turn on the news today and not see a headline about transgenderism.  It’s not something I would likely preach on, but I realize that sometimes there is some small wisdom in your pastor speaking to the events in the news. So, let me wade into these uncertain waters and see if I can help with this discussion. And, yeah, this is long.

But first, let me start with a little background story. A few years ago a man who was an elder on our Session (and a friend) walked into my office with his wife and said we needed to talk (we pastors know that’s almost always bad news). He told me that most all his life that he knew inside he was really a woman and that he had finally made the decision to transition into presenting as a woman and had legally changed his gender status with the state.

It goes without saying that of all the things I had prepared to help people in my congregation deal with, this was probably last on the list. I was shell-shocked and can’t even really remember what I told him and his deeply conflicted wife.

So I dove into as much literature on the subject as was available for a layman to read. I called and talked to the one Christian professor who has any expertise at all in this area. I’ve kept up with the news. So, while I’m far from an expert, I have read more and thought more about this than most people. So let me launch into a collection of thoughts and observations.

First, and perhaps most important, the people who are dealing with “gender dysphoria” (that is what it’s technically called) are for the most part a bunch of people who are deeply hurting and struggle greatly with life. I don’t believe any of them ask for this and, regardless of how other elements play out, they – and their families – need our compassion. They face a deep inner conflict and most live very unhappy lives.

Second, you need to be aware that there is a spectrum of behaviors that look related, but may not be. Cross-dressers, drag queens, transvestites, female impersonators are often responding to very different internal feeling from those who are gender dysphoric. They should not be lumped together. Nor are the gender dysphoric generally born with elements of two physical sexual identities (known as genital ambiguity or intersex). They tend to be fully biologically either male or female.

Third, in spite of the certainty that seems to be connected to current pronouncements and policies, we actually know very little about gender dysphoria. Even the people who deal with it on a regular basis admit that most of it is a great mystery. So don’t be fooled by people who are now speaking about it with great certainty, we barely understand it.

Fourth, we’re not talking about very many people on a percentage basis. Here is where our lack of knowledge really plays out, because the estimates of how many people are experiencing this vary widely. On the high side, some estimate that about .003 of the population is gender dysphoric. A more standard estimate has been 1 in 30,000; or .00003. The real number is probably somewhere in the middle, but it’s not many people we’re talking about.

Now, let me shift into what is more opinion….

1. When you stand back and look at the issue, how we have suddenly approached the issue seems silly. For a person whose DNA and body is one gender to suddenly and instantly be considered to be the opposite sex simply by saying they are kind of defies logic. Even those who go through the difficult and arduous physical transformations don’t actually change their biological genders; they merely change their bodies’ appearance. To consider Bruce Jenner a woman (indeed, a “woman of the year”) simply because he wears a dress, heavy makeup, a wig, and say he is a woman is a strange idea.

There are also people who see themselves as “gender fluid”, who may feel they are more male or female at various times, in spite of their DNA. The truth is, there is more to gender than feelings.

We read in the very beginning of the Bible: Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Gender and gender differences are an integral part of the created order. Yes, too often societies have used gender differences to oppress women. But to imagine a society where we treat the world as ‘genderless’ is a triumph of political correctness over created order and common sense.

That said, there is no reason why we cannot come to some simple, reasonable, and polite accommodations for those who wish to consider and present themselves as another gender. But, they should not expect everyone else to change their view of common sense reality and normal public accommodation to fit their unusual perspective. There ought to be some reasonable middle ground.

2. It seems that, in spite of all the emotional news stories we see about the six year old boy who knows he’s a girl, it actually seems that the very best thing we can do for children with gender dysphoria is to encourage them to wait until after high school to act on any change in their appearance or bodies.

Dr. Eric Vilain is a professor of human genetics and pediatrics at UCLA and director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology. His article “What should you do if your son says he’s a girl?” is well worth a read if you want an educated, research driven opinion; (http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-vilain-transgender-parents-20150521-story.html ). In it, he writes:

“Gender dysphoric children have not usually become transgender adults. For example, the large majority of gender dysphoric boys studied so far have become young men content to remain male. More than 80 percent adjusted by adolescence.”

Another study notes :
“Only 6 to 23 percent of boys and 12 to 27 percent of girls treated in gender clinics showed persistence of their gender dysphoria into adulthood.”  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2697020/#!po=45.0000 )

To put it more simply: if a child says they believe they are really the opposite sex inside, give then a good deal of home acceptance, be sure they have psychological support, tell them they need to wait until after high school to begin to take action on it. In these cases, less than 20% will feel the same way by the end of high school.

Imagine the kids who will now will be allowed to ‘transition’ their apparent gender in grade school, taking drugs, possibly undergoing surgeries, who might find that at 18 years old they don’t feel the same way. Dr. Villand ends his article:

“…(lumping) together all therapies, regardless of their motivation, target age and method. Banning all therapists from helping families trying to alleviate children's gender dysphoria would be premature, a triumph of ideology over science.

The president can set a better example by pausing at the limits of our knowledge and encouraging scientists to collect the data we need. Until we have it, let’s be careful about telling the well-meaning parents of gender dysphoric children what to do.”

3. I think that most of the positions I read on the whole transgendered bathroom issue are simply too simple and make sweeping changes to address a very small need. Remember, there are very few gender dysphoric people.

I accept that most people with gender dysphoria who are presenting as the opposite sex are not sexual perverts with want to infiltrate a bathroom for some nefarious purpose. They just want to pee. As such, asking a biological man who dresses and looks very much like a women to walk into the men’s room is asking for all sorts of problems.

That said, opening up all restrooms or locker/changing rooms to anyone of any gender (and make no mistake, this is what these rules do) creates all sorts of problems as other will take advantage of this. Read the comments of this woman who is a survivor of sexual abuse to get a perspective you don’t hear in the news: http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/23/a-rape-survivor-speaks-out-about-transgender-bathrooms/.

Even in schools, it became obvious that in one middle school a biological boy (who is still fully anatomically male) would be allowed to use the girl’s locker room for gym class. This would allow for the circumstances where twelve years old girls could find themselves showering in the same shower room with a biological male. I just can’t imagine how anyone could think this was OK.

Honestly, schools and workplaces have been making quiet, sensitive, and reasonable accommodations for gender dysphoric people for many years and I actually think this sudden attention will tend to make things worse for many of them.

It’s not hard to ask most schools and businesses to make single person bathrooms (like the bathroom in every Starbucks I've ever been in) or changing rooms available and to ask gender dysphoric people to use them. Most schools and businesses have them available already. That’s a reasonable accommodation on both sides.

If the federal guideline was that there should be single person unisex bathrooms available for any students to use, as needed, I think we would not be having this divisive debate. But again, much of this is simply politics over practicality. One group trying to force others to adopt their new worldview of gender and sexuality, brushing aside any unintended consequences as unimportant.

I hope that we can avoid both extremes in this complicated and poorly understood issue. I do know that in our increasingly non-Christian culture that anyone who opposes the new fluid gender mantra will be branded as ignorant and “haters”. We need to be thoughtful and caring, but not fold under pressure.

Perhaps one day we’ll have a better understanding of why someone is fully and completely biologically male or female, but feels their body and their mind don’t agree. Until then, let’s not let ideology get ahead of understanding and lead us to make decisions with unintended negative consequences. Let’s be compassionate, but also practical. And let us not assume that the way God made us doesn’t matter.

Pastor Al Sandalow

Ellensburg Presbyterian

Doctrine Notes-Trinity Chapter One

Favorite Quotes

-p11 “we long for selfless, trustworthy, unending love from someone we can trust to be faithful and helpful”


-p25 “To be a Christian is also to be a member of the universal church. The church includes everyone from every nation, culture, language, and race whose saving faith is in Jesus Christ. Practically, this means that a Christian is part of a tremendous heritage and does not come to the Scriptures apart from community with all of God’s people from throughout all of the church’s history. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians confess together that the God of the Bible is Trinitarian.”


Areas Of Disagreement

--p14 – Other “gods” as demons.

>>I think the authors overstate the case. I do believe in demons and I do think it’s possible that demonic activity could have caused people to worship false gods and idols. But, I think it is just as likely that these false gods were created by human imagination and speculation.


When Paul talks about the gods in the Greek and Roman pantheon and temples, he says this:


1 Cor 8:3-6 "But the man who loves God is known by God. {4} So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. {5} For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"), {6} yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live."


No mention of any spiritual forces at all. I think we need to be careful not to say any more than the Bible itself says.

--p21 – Jesus as the Angel of God in the Old Testament

>>There are several times in the OT when an angel appears and it is vague as to whether the angel is merely a messenger from God or God himself. It is clear that the people who met these messengers felt they were in the very presence of God. I think we should leave that as a mystery and not try to solve it by inserting Jesus.


In find, in general, efforts to ‘prove’ the existence of the Trinity in the OT unconvincing. Several places where God is referred to in the plural may simply be examples of what is called the “royal we”. In others, the word can be both singular or plural. And on page 19 the authors are simply mistaken about the “Targem Neofiti”, mis-translating a word that is actually ‘wisdom”.


While there may be echoes of God’s Trinitarian nature in the OT, it is not truly manifest until the ministry of Jesus and the fullness of God’s self-revelation.

--p31 – Modalism

>>While I agree Modalism is an error, I think the authors do a poor job of defining it. Modalism says that God is one, but that we experience, and thus know God in different ways: Creator/Father, Son/Savior, and Spirit/Sustainer. God never changes, only the way we encounter God does.


While this is an attractive idea and one that gets around the most difficult elements of the concept of the Trinity, I think it falls short of describing the Biblical picture of the nature of Jesus’ relationship to his Father.

Doctrine Study Notes - Revelation: Chapter Two

Favorite Quotes

-p38 “The opposite of revelation is speculation.”

-p39 “Common grace also allows people who are not connected to God through Jesus Christ to live seemingly decent normal lives of compassion and service, though their deeds are not in any way done to God’s glory as acts of worship.”

-p40 “God has written his morality on human hearts.”

-p41 “Scripture is God speaking his truth to us in human words.”

-p43 “…rightly interpreting particular sections of Scripture requires paying attention both to the immediate context and overall context of all Scripture.”

-p48 “People who were providentially prepared by God, and motivated and superintended by the holy Spirit, spoke and wrote according to their own personalities and circumstances in such a way that their words are the very Word of God.”

-p59 “In the end, it is perfectly reasonable to say that we do not have an answer for every question we may have…”

-p68 “sola scriptura…should not be confused with solo scriptura, which is the erroneous belief that truth is to be found only in Scripture and nowhere else…..(However) the Bible and the Bible alone teaches a complete Christian worldview that includes what we need to know about God, how to come into relation with (God), who Jesus is and what he did for our salvation…”

-p72-73 “The very best way to interpret the Bible is to read it….be aware of the type of literature you are reading and interpreting…You will want to ask, what is the author trying to accomplish?”

-p74 “We believe that Christians should do everything the Bible commands, not do anything the Bible forbids*, and where the Bible is silent, work from Biblical principles, conscience, wisdom, and godly counsel to determine what should and should not be done.

      *There are things in the Bible that have been are no longer effect in the New Covenant and some things that are so tied to a specific cultural practice, that we do not believe they are intended to be rules of all Christians, in all places, over all time – like making women cover their heads in church (1 Cor 11:5-6).

-p75 “Christians worship God, not the Bible”


Areas Of Disagreement

--p44 “…when Scripture is rightly interpreted, it is ultimately about Jesus as God, our Savior….”
“The Old Testament uses various means to reveal Jesus, including promises, appearances, foreshadowing types and titles.”
“…The Old Testament teaches about Jesus through appearances that he makes before his birth…”


>>Too often, New Testament Christians look for every possible verse or event in the Old Testament to be connected to Jesus. I feel that this is often mistake. There are many verses where someone finds some vague reference to Jesus or some person that has some of Jesus’ qualities, or any of his duties or authority – they then see that as a prediction or a “type” of the coming Jesus.

This is not to say that God’s plan for salvation or a savior are not the major flow and theme in the OT, only that not every specific element of the OT is directly about Jesus.

I am equally unconvinced that Jesus made and earthly appearances before his conception in Nazareth. The Bible does not makes this claim. I would specifically reject the idea that Jesus is the “angel of the Lord”, and idea that comes close to the ancient heresy of Arianism.

--p58 “Inerrant means that Scriptures are perfect, without any error.”

>Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe the Scriptures are filled with errors.

But I would put this differently. I would say that the purpose of the Scriptures is to bring us into relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and to teach us what we need to know about God and his will for us. In that, all it does is without error and perfect.

But, the Bible is not a science textbook. It’s not a modern newspaper or history textbook. If you try to use it for those purposes, parts of it don’t work very well. So I prefer to say Scripture is inerrant for the purpose God created it for.

--p71 “English Standard Version…”

>The ESV is a good translation, but not significantly better than the NIV, the NRSV, or a few others. I still use the NIV as my main Bible, but I do have the ESV as a second translation on my phone.

--Addational Notes
Six Rules of Biblical Hermeneutics*

(*rules to use when understanding Scripture)

E.J. Carnell, in The Case for Orthodox Theology, pp 53-65, the following six rules govern Biblical hermeneutics.


1. Revelation is Progressive


2. The New Testament interprets the Old Testament.


3. The Epistles Interpret the Gospels


4. Systematic Passages Interpret the Incidental

5. Universal Passages Interpret the Local


6. Didactic (teaching) Passages Interpret the Symbolic

Flaten Philharmonic

Erik and his friends delighted us with some amazing music last Sunday and I thought I'd share it with you.

Yes, I couldn't possibly have a worse angle for the videos. I'd much rather be looking at their faces. But, I didn't really have a choice. Close your eyes and enjoy. Thanks again to the Flaten Philharmonic!

Atheist's Don't Have No Songs

I've had a few people ask for the lyrics of this tongue in cheek song I used in my sermon last week. Here it is:



Christians have their hymns in pages,
Hava Nagila’s for the Jews,
Baptists have the rock of ages,
Atheists just sing the blues.

Romantics play Claire de Lune,
Born agains sing He is risen,
But no one ever wrote a tune,
For godless existentialism.

For Atheists,
There’s no good news,
They’ll never sing a song of faith.

For atheists,
They have a rule,
The “he” is always lowercase.
The “he” is always lowercase.

Some folks sing a Bach cantata,
Lutherans get Christmas trees,
Atheist songs add up to nada,
But they do have Sundays free.

Pentecostals sing they sing to heaven,
Coptic’s have the books of scrolls,
Numerologists can count to seven,
Atheists have rock and roll.

For Atheists,
There’s no good news,
They’ll never sing a song of Faith.

In their songs,
They have a rule,
The “he” is always lowercase.
The “he” is always lowercase.

Catholics dress up for Mass,
And listen to, Gregorian chants.
Atheists just take a pass,
Watch football in their underpants.
Watch football in their underpants.

Atheists, Atheists, Atheists,
Don’t have no songs!