Mental Musings

I was recently in a group setting where we were asked about Thanksgiving traditions with our families. I realized that I was the only one in the group who did not grow up with lots of family joining us for Thanksgiving or Christmas. We never lived close to other family members, so we typically had just our immediate family at home for the holidays. And some of those were without my dad while he was deployed during war time. I can still remember sitting around a reel-to-reel player listening to a tape my dad made while onboard his ship as he wished us all a Merry Christmas. I don't remember if he was home for Christmas, but I can remember that tape as well as the hours of Christmas music that he had taped from the Armed Forces Radio Network that was piped throughout his ship. Even though it was typically just my parents, my sister, and my brother, we usually sat down at a table with more food than we could eat in a week. My dad would always have something to say or some s...

God is love. That is true. The Bible tells us that in many different passages, but none as clearly as 1 John 4:8 & 16. But that is only one characteristic of God, even though it is the one characteristic that is often used to excuse sinful lives by a selfish world. Most people describe God as a loving God. Until something happens that they don't understand, then God becomes the punching bag of society. I believe that Christians have not been as successful or as burdened with witnessing because we have focused so much on God's love. Many people do not feel the urgency to accept Christ as their Savior because they cannot imagine a loving God condemning people to an eternity in Hell. And others reject God because they cannot believe in a loving God who will allow pain and suffering. The church's focus on a loving God has enabled the world to see a perverted religion. A religion that has been minimized to a jolly, smiling, good-natured God who stands above, but does...

The danger inherent in intellectualism is the misplaced notion that intellect is gained strictly from the learned studies of the sciences and humanities without any necessity of faith. To justify this inane belief one would need to ignore the gapping holes in scientific research and embrace the unwritten need to deify scientific thought as the end all to any argument. Scientific research has left the realm of true science and has been catapulted into a religion all its own. Scientists who dare to question the authority of the Holy Script are attacked and vilified as heretics of the faith. And, just as cults loosely based on truth remove or add to the written Word, when actions do not correlate to the Holy Script of Science, scientists see no moral issue with falsifying their findings. Or, to offer the benefit of the doubt toward their noble cause, perhaps I should rephrase that to adjusting the results based on their own preconceived expectations. Science is supposed to be a...

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30, NIV) If you had a decent education in America, you should have learned that the educational model of the Western world was based largely on the Ancient Greece educational system of providing intellectual studies, artistic endeavors, and physical activity for all students. Much of our understanding of the educational structure of the ancient Greeks comes from the writings of Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC).  Aristotle was the finale among a dynasty of education: Socrates taught Plato who in turn taught Aristotle. Aristotle then taught one history’s most successful commanders, the undefeated empire builder, Alexander the Great. Aristotle’s writings cover a multitude of subjects: physics, metaphysics, poetry, music, theater, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, ethics, and biology. From these writings, and the importance of the theater and the ...

The past few years have been extremely difficult for my family, specifically with financial and health issues. Some of these issues are behind us and some continue to linger on. It has been and remains a long, hard road, and we cannot always see why God has led us down this winding path overgrown with weeds and thorns that hide the many rocks and potholes. I know that there are some people who think that Christians, especially pastors, should not share so much online because it appears to be self serving, bragging, seeking sympathy, or used as a means to promote yourself. Others belittle any problems that you have by telling you that things could be worse, as if to say that you should keep your problems to yourself. These people apparently believe that Christians should be more like the family in this video: Too many Christians feel the need to hide the reality of their lives. But God has a different perspective about this: His Word teaches us that we are to laugh and cry...

He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence! Be still!” The wind ceased and there was a great calm. (Mark 4:39, HCSB) In the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, the character Nettie Fowler sings the words with which Jerry Lewis would later end every one of his Muscular Dystrophy Association telethons from 1964-2010: When you walk through a storm Keep your chin up high And don’t be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm Is a golden sky And the sweet silver song of a lark. Walk on through the wind, Walk on through the rain, Tho’ your drams be tossed and blown. Walk on, walk on, With hope in your heart And you’ll never walk alone. This song was also made famous due to hit versions recorded by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Andy Williams, and Doris Day. Even Pink Floyd interpolated this song into their own song “Fearless” in 1971 and Barbara Streisand chose this song to end the 2001 Emmy Awards in honor of the vic...

Once you put your faith and trust in Christ, it is then not possible to pick and choose what you will believe in God's Word. God tells us that all scripture is from God and that Jesus is the Word of God. If you choose not to accept certain parts of God's Word than you choose not to accept Christ. If you believe that certain parts of God's Word are false or wrong, then you are claiming that Christ is false or wrong. You cannot separate Jesus from the Word of God, for Jesus is the living, breathing Word of God. You cannot choose to both accept and reject Jesus, to believe and disbelieve Him, or claim He is truth and, yet still, somehow untruth.