J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain, Skeptical Christian
From Devout Atheist to Skeptical Pastor: A Blog For Busted-Up, Beat-Down People (Like Me)
God, you loved me right out of my addictions. You loved me out of my despair. You loved me out of my darkness, conceitedness, misery. You loved me right out of myself.
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
— Galatians 2:20
thepassionsoflife asked:
Thank you for answering my previous questions. I enjoy hearing what you have to say about these topics! So I was wondering…what do you think of the end of times? Personally, it’s a subject that is of extreme fascination to me. What do you think of the book of Revelations? Do you think we’ll see the end of the Earth as we know it in our life time? How do you think it will happen? I would love to hear your thoughts. I’m actually taking an English class on the subject, and I’m really looking forward to learning all about the topic, as it has interested me for so long yet I never got a chance to study it. God Bless and keep on preaching the Good News!
Thanks for the encouragement! I’ll simplify it the best I can for you here. The End Times — not just Revelation, but throughout the entire Bible — can be divided into two categories: What we know and what we don’t know.
What we know:
“God cares less about what you’re doing — though He does care about that — but He is most concerned with who you’re becoming. He sees what your hands are doing but cares more about where your heart is going. God looks at the heart of man, not the appearance.”
There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing those things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.
— C.S. Lewis
“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
— C.S. Lewis
You cracked open your journal, busted out your favorite pen, and finally opened your Bible.
Five sentences later, you have no idea what you just read.
Confusion, frustration, resignation: But the pastor made it so easy. It was better when he told it.
And the final excuse: At least I tried.
It’s happened to all of us, from rookies to veterans, when we catch the excitement of digging into Scripture and come out cold. Most of us will conclude the Bible is too hard, that we’re not mature enough, that we need to be spoon-fed, that something’s wrong with me, that we’ll try it again later. And with each pass at reading, we grow more bewildered.
Every pastor with the best of intentions is yelling at you to read your Bible, but they forget to tell you how.
Of course the simplest way would be to turn to Genesis and just rip right through it. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a little help in reading Scripture. If you genuinely want to read the Bible but have had some false starts, here are some ways to dig into the Greatest Truth in the universe.
Based on our research, I also worry that some of the Christian community’s teaching on abstinence focuses too much on the personal, individualist benefits of delaying sex until marriage. I am certainly not questioning the motives of those who urge the next generation toward sexual purity but I do wonder if some of the methods reflect a mindset influenced by individualism. ‘Save yourself for marriage and have fantastic sex with one partner, the way it’s meant to be. Sex as God intended will blow your mind. Be safe; avoid the risks of STDs and an unwanted pregnancy. Think about your future.’ Much of the abstinence messaging, however well-intended, capitulates to culturally cultivated individualism: sex is about me.
— David Kinnaman
We should not assume that the tough questions of a hostile professor are at the root of lost faith. Rather in many instances, I believe the Christian community has failed to disciple its science-inclined students to become responsible, intelligent, capable, resourceful, and faithful followers of Christ. We need to do a better job stewarding the intellect of this generation.
— David Kinnaman
“God did not die for man because of some value He perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St. Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is love.”
— C.S. Lewis
“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”
— Karl Barth
“Does the church have the courage to become relevant by becoming biblical?”
— David Wells
“Examine yourself: Does it lie within your power right now to weep over the spiritual destruction of the people on your street? Such tears come only through a profound work of God. If we want this work of God in our lives and in our churches, there will be agonizing prayer: ‘God, break my heart!'”
— John Piper
“The hijacking of the concept of morality began, of course, when we reduced Scripture to formula and a love story to theology, and finally morality to rules. It is a very different thing to break a rule than it is to cheat on a lover. A person’s mind can do all sorts of things his heart would never let him do. If we think of God’s grace as a technicality, a theological precept, we can disobey without the slightest feeling of guilt, but if we think of God’s grace as a relational invitation, an outreach of love, we are pretty much jerks for belittling the gesture.”
— Donald Miller
“For me to not trust God is crazy, because His fingerprints are all over my story from top to bottom.”
— Jeremy Lin
Never use cultural ‘relevance’ as an excuse for sin. God’s standard of righteousness does not change.
— Wesley Hall
I have learned to live with the rise and fall of the thoughts and feelings of faith, I co-exist with honest doubt, to accept tension and paradox without clinging to it as an excuse for inaction.
— Daniel Taylor
unapproachablelight asked:
Do you think your faith could be where it is now if you hadn’t gone through seminary? What do you think of serving in either the church or the missions fields without attending a seminary school?
Near the end of my seminary studies, I wrote a blog post about my entire experience plus wisdom for students here. Read it whenever you like.
One thing seminary does is it will expose your strengths and weaknesses. I hear plenty of pastors say, “Seminary will destroy your faith and make you resent God” — but that’s impossible. No one makes anyone do anything: your environment only exposes who you really are. Same with the car who cuts you off, the friend who betrays you, the dude who holds you at gunpoint, the seminary that pressures you. All of it reveals what’s already inside.
That’s why some seminarians come out with huge Bible-heads all puffed up from learning Greek, or some will have a dried up faith when they learn about Creationism, the Old Testament genocides, and how the Bible was made, as if they finally get to say, “This is what we believe?” No one did that to them.
So be ready for the most rigorous refinement of your intellect in the context of your faith. If you’re humble and teachable along the way, you’ll love it. If your expectations are otherwise, it’s a minefield.
Continue reading “Question: Seminary Will Hurt Or Help My Faith?”
Why do you think Israel kept messing with their blessing? Why did God painfully remind them of His presence? Because it is impossible to be grateful without grief. It is impossible to be blessed without knowing you’re broken. The need for healing acknowledges our default is hurting. Deficit must always precede thankfulness, which then leads us to joyfully obey. There is no other way.
I always thought my parents and these grown-ups had a super-secret system for organizing their life and making Huge Forever-Changing Decisions. Writing checks and doing taxes and paying the rent was like second nature to them. Me in my little kid boots, a sore neck from looking up all the time: it was daunting to think of being a grown-up.
It turns out, they were guessing most of the time.
Continue reading “Honestly, Half The Time I Have No Idea What I’m Doing”
Summary:
**Some spoilers ahead.**
Three men are sent into space by NASA in 1970 when the space industry begins to lose its luster, and suddenly an expedition to the moon becomes a rescue mission back to earth. The journey is cut short when faulty equipment explodes and these three men, with the resourcefulness of the control center on the ground, use everything at their disposal to make it safely home.
Starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Ed Harris, and Gary Sinise. Directed by Ron Howard.
Questionable Content:
Intense scenes of distress and anxiety in a spaceshuttle, plenty of well-deserved yelling, some coarse language, and a woman taking a shower loses her wedding ring (no nudity).
Why You Should See It:
The indelible words of Astronaut Jim Lovell are embedded in our culture: Houston, we have a problem. The problem is more or less a mechanical failure that would hardly make sense to ordinary laymen, but the film slows down to present these historic trials piece by agonizing piece: leaking oxygen, low battery, rising CO2 levels, freezing temperatures, possible heat damage and disintegration, and a horrifying scene where the broken shuttle must make a perfectly timed burst for 39 seconds in one direction.
We know they survived in the true story, but it doesn’t make the movie any less tense. The flight director Gene Kranz, played by a brilliant Ed Harris in the best performance of the movie, passionately breaks down each problem with the crew like a math puzzle: except the stakes are human lives. Hope drives them to relentless measures. No one sleeps. You’ll never hear “insurmountable odds” quite the same way again.
Continue reading “Movies That Christians Should Watch: Apollo 13”
J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain, Skeptical Christian 